Sultan Al Jaber, an oil executive taking a sabbatical as a climate diplomat, likes to talk about delivery.
Having spent much of the past two nights brokering a compromise deal, the COP28 president took just a few minutes of the final plenary session to end two weeks of climate talks in Dubai.
“It is an enhanced, balanced — but make no mistake — historic package to accelerate climate action,” he said after delegates rose to their feet in applause to celebrate the deal.
After the despondency of Monday, when the initial draft pleased almost nobody, the mood quickly changed on Tuesday evening as delegations were persuaded to back a new text.
Everyone from US Climate Envoy John Kerry to Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman were seen trooping into Al Jaber’s encampment in the UNFCCC office in Dubai’s Expo city as a compromise was put together.
A call to transition energy systems away from fossil fuels – the first time oil and gas had been included in a COP agreement – won over those demanding strong action; but oil producers and developing countries were reassured by assertions that countries are free to follow their own paths to net zero.
Taken together with a call to triple renewables deployment, action on methane emissions and get a loss and damage fund going, Dubai may well be the most significant COP since the Paris Agreement in 2015.
But after two weeks of work, it’s easy to be starry-eyed about a deal. On a close look, many climate campaigners will question whether it’s truly aligned with keeping climate change to the 1.5 degrees mandated by Paris.
A line on transition fuels, for example, appears to be a reference to natural gas – less harmful than coal, but still a carbon-spewing fossil fuel.
While the Dubai deal sends many positive signals, the future will be delivered by consumers, business and national governments and the world isn’t yet moving nearly fast enough.
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