If the recent United Nations climate summit, known as COP 28, delivered anything, it was ramped up pressure on fossil fuels. For the first time in the history of the annual negotiations, which, following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have occurred every year since 1995, participants named the thing primarily responsible for the climate crisis.
The final global stocktake—a measure of progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement—from COP 28 called for a “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.” Some hailed the term’s inclusion as a historic moment.
Others weren’t so convinced, as the steps to reduce and eventually phase out fossil fuels—which many nations called for at the summit—were left out of the agreement.
“Any credible [global stocktake] to have a chance of holding global warming at the 1.5 C [34.7 F] limit, even after overshoot, will have to state clearly that fossil fuels need to be rapidly phased out in line with the best available science,” commented Johan Rockström, a professor of earth system science at the University of Potsdam, in Germany, and the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Critics also noted that COP 28 was hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the top oil-producing nations, and the summit’s president was Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the UAE’s state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the biggest oil companies in the world. In the run-up to COP 28, documents leaked by a whistleblower and published by the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting revealed that the UAE had planned to use its role as host country to make lucrative oil deals on the side of the conference.
Al Jaber was also accused of “verging on climate denial” given comments he made in November arguing that there is “no science” behind the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels to halt global warming at 1.5 C. He claimed that phasing out fossil fuels would not promote sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Equally disconcerting was the unprecedented number of fossil fuel lobbyists given access to COP 28. Of the summit’s 70,000 delegates, more than 2,400 were fossil fuel lobbyists, according to an analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition. Only delegates from the UAE and Brazil—the former being COP 28’s host nation and the latter scheduled to host COP 30—outnumbered the lobbyists.
Yet for all this bad news with regard to fossil fuels, with the phrase now included in the final document, pressure to include language about a phase-out will likely increase at next year’s COP 29 summit, which will be hosted by yet another oil-producing nation, Azerbaijan.
Pressure to include language about a phase-out will likely increase at next year’s COP 29 summit.
A growing number of countries have been calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. In addition to the World Health Organization, a dozen countries have signed on, along with 101 cities and subnational governments, more than 2,300 civil society organizations, and in excess of 620,000 individuals, including more than 100 Nobel laureates. The treaty calls for an end to the expansion of coal, oil, and gas production, and a fair transition—meaning that countries of the Global North, who are historically responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions, should transition first and be the fastest. They should also assist countries of the Global South in transitioning to renewable energy.
COP 28 also called for a tripling of global renewable energy and a doubling of the current rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
But the results of U.N. climate negotiations are not legally binding; rather, they are targets. Whether countries decide to implement the recommended policies is up to them.
So what actions can be taken locally, whether nationally in the United States or at a state or community level?
While campaigning in 2020, Joe Biden called climate change “the number one issue facing humanity.” As President, Biden says his administration has done more than any other to shift the United States to clean energy. In 2022, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), “the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history,” according to the White House.
Because the transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the IRA sets a goal of 50 percent of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles.
The IRA also earmarks $3 billion for the U.S. Postal Service—which has the largest federal vehicle fleet—for the purchase of zero-emission vehicles and related infrastructure.
What’s more, the IRA allocates $1.5 billion to cut methane pollution from oil and gas operations. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and is 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Yet under the Biden Administration, as The Washington Post reported, the United States “is producing more oil than any country ever has.” Currently, the United States produces about thirteen million barrels of crude oil per day—more than Saudi Arabia or Russia, the report notes.
In addition to oil, the United States is the top exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is mostly composed of methane. In the first half of 2023, the United States exported more natural gas than it ever has—about 20.4 billion cubic feet per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Plus, two more export plants planned for Louisanna this year could add an additional thirty-eight million tons per annum, according to Reuters.
At COP 28, more than 300 organizations from at least forty countries called on the Biden Administration to “abandon its support for LNG” and to stop issuing permits for new LNG facilities.
The alternative to Biden, however, would be much worse. Recall that, as President, Donald Trump—currently the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential election—withdrew the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement and ended many of President Barack Obama’s policies to curb climate change. Biden, on the other hand, restored the United States to the historic Paris agreement on his first day in office as President, in 2021.
Nevertheless, many of the young voters who helped propel Biden to the White House in 2020 seem less willing to vote for him this time around, due to his shortcomings on climate policy and especially his unabashed support of Israel’s war on Gaza. In an NBC News poll last November, Biden trailed Trump among young voters by four percentage points.
What all of this means for COP 29 and the eventual phasing out of fossil fuels remains an open-ended question. The takeaway, though, is that sustained public pressure on elected officials around the globe to implement badly needed climate policy now will—and must—continue.