Dubai, United Arab Emirates — "We have language on fossil fuel for the first time ever," declared COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber as he graveled the deal reached for the Global Stocktake at U.N.'s annual climate change meeting to close a day late. Al Jaber is right. After more than 30 years of U.N. climate change negotiations since the Earth Summit in 1992, the words "fossil fuels" do appear for the first time in an officially adopted U.N. decision document. Previously, climate negotiations had focused solely on emissions without mentioning whence those emissions came.
Overnight wrangling among the 196 countries negotiating the Global Stocktake (GST) at COP28 yielded the shiny new outcome document. The new GST avoids the unfortunate earlier situation in which the initial GST text triggered OPEC and other oil and gas-producing countries with the incredibly hurtful words "phase-out." Instead, the new GST more gently calls upon countries to engage in such global efforts as "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems."
