The debate about Deleting Carbon from the Atmosphere is controversial
Climate Change and the World’s Small Island Compact (COP28): What do we really need to know about the future of the fossil fuel era?
The text, which was agreed on the morning of 13 December after several all-night negotiating sessions, “shows that they are actually listening to the science”, Schipper says. She states that transition away from fossil fuels, is still disappointing even though it could be interpreted in different ways. It doesn’t mean eliminating, whereas ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels, is about ‘the end’,” she says.
The COP28 agreement calls for a 60 percent decline in emissions by the year 2035, and that is strong according to Gregory Nemet, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the more carbon removal technologies will have to be used to keep temperatures from skyrocketing further.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agency that organizes the COP meetings, said its press release was the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. It was reported that the Saudi Arabia’s energy minister stated that the agreement wouldn’t affect the country’s crude oil exports.
The requirement under UN rules that countries unanimously agree on text is a “fatal flaw” in the COP process, says Charles Fletcher, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who studies sea-level rise. At COP28, former US vice-president Al Gore, a longtime environmental campaigner, urged member states to consider taking decisions agreed on by 75% of nations. It is ridiculous to have the leaders of fossil fuel production to shepherd humanity into a safe climate future.
However, delegates from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — which are among most vulnerable to climate change — said in a statement that they weren’t in the room when the final deal was agreed. “We were working hard to coordinate the 39 small island developing states that are disproportionately affected by climate change, and so were delayed in coming here.” AOSIS is advocating a global emissions peak by the year 2025.
“It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do. This approach is not something we need to be asked to defend.
The principle for a loss and damage fund had been agreed at COP27 last year in Egypt. “We started the COP with this huge bang,” says Schipper. But she says that COP28 has otherwise been disappointing when it comes to promises on climate finance.
Romain Weikmans, who studies climate finance based at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, adds that “the big chunk of the climate finance” discussion will now take place next year at COP29, which will be in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Carbon removal brings with it a climate conundrum: Humanity has to do it, but done the wrong way, critics worry it could distract from that ultimate goal of rapidly reducing emissions, by pulling both funding and research resources away from clean energy. If countries are able to remove carbon from the atmosphere to offset their emissions, carbon removal might even encourage the continued burning of fossil fuels. What is called net zero is what it is. The COP28 agreement calls for reaching this globally by 2050.)
