As Cop28 ended after 14 gruelling days, many people were clutching at straws and looking for meaning in the mere mention in the text of a transition from fossil fuels. There will be headlines talking about what huge progress it is simply to say this – even without any requirement for real action.
This would have been very welcome 20 or even 10 years ago, but it wasn’t the gamechanger needed to prevent climate catastrophe, to end the era of deadly fossil fuels, or to save the north star of 1.5C. To claim that it is a triumph, or anything even close to that, is simply a lie.
One more lie to add to all the other lies told so often that those who utter them begin to believe them: the lie that rich countries care about climate justice. The lie that human rights are separate from climate justice. The lie that the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK are high in ambition, and it’s developing countries that are lacking it.
Rich countries have worked hard to try to get a hollow headline on fossil fuels out of this Cop. They are like emperors with no clothes. The UK, US and the EU not only point-blank refused to discuss cutting their own emissions in line with both fairness and science, but their agreement on “fossil fuel phase-out” has more loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese. It comes without acknowledgment of historical responsibility, or redistribution, or the remaking of a financial system of debt, tax and trade that has been rigged to keep developing countries locked into exploiting resources simply to fill the coffers of rich countries.
Our movements, our frontline communities, know these are lies. Scientists know they are lies, and so do many developing countries. Those already living the realities of unjust climate breakdown know that 1.5C will result in a death sentence for the poorest, yet we remain on track for 3C global heating.
Inside the halls of a lavish conference centre in Dubai Expo City – a conference centre built with the blood and sweat of thousands of exploited migrant labourers – powerful governments, with corporate lobbyists whispering in their ears, negotiated texts, all with profound implications for billions of lives globally. We have known from years of bitter experience that the climate talks are not only about carbon but about the global economy, about those who benefit from a rigged economy wanting to continue to benefit, even as it takes humanity to the edge of catastrophe.
We have never been under any illusion about the scale of the task facing us. Climate justice groups see the UN negotiations as a contested space where our power, as mass movements of people, is ranged against the power of corporate capital. We may not have the same access as the wealthy to ensure that decisions taken at Cop protect our interests. But we are adept at using all the tools at our disposal to keep our ideas not only alive, but to make them politically inevitable.
I am not a Cop defeatist. I know that change can be won. On the opening day of the conference, the loss and damage fund was finally put into operation, although with pledges that are a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of damages. That fund was birthed by our movements, fought for at a time when many in the UN space, including mainstream environmentalists, openly claimed that justice was a distraction from the real goal of reducing carbon. The US administration, meanwhile, said that such an admission would be a red line, and that it would never accept responsibility for the damage it had caused. Our walkouts, our activities at a global and national level, our pressure and determination, and our detailed policy work have offered a glimmer of hope to many.
Two nights ago, the US climate envoy, John Kerry, said that never have we had to make decisions where the result is one of life and death. He was forgetting that the US recently vetoed a UN resolution to stop what other UN experts say are war crimes and a genocide in the making in Gaza. Despite attempts to silence us, we brought the voices of Palestinians into the climate talks – calling for not just a ceasefire but an end to the occupation. These calls are crucial. There can be no climate justice without human rights.
Those of us who fight for climate justice are often told we are on the fringe, or that we are being unrealistic. But it is the people with the most power at the moment who are being unrealistic. We are the ones who actually know this is a life-and-death fight. We are the realistic ones, and so we are the only hope for the future. So we will come back, stronger and more powerful, until it is the interests of people and not of profit that shapes the climate talks.
Asad Rehman is executive director of War on Want
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