COP28: Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels?

“This was a paradigm-shifting day for climate talks,” writes Chico Harlan, a global climate correspondent for The Washington Post on December 13, the day after the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was scheduled to conclude.

[See earlier post: “COP28: Will Developed Nations Reduce Emissions?” December 6, 2023]

“The chief global goal of the text is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but even in that scenario, there would be a limited use for oil and gas,” adds Harlan in the source article, one of several updates written by Post reporters after the agreement was unexpectedly reached on December 13.

The text also mentions the need to ramp up technologies “such as carbon capture” that could be used in tandem with fossil fuels to capture emissions.

“It’s easy to criticize this deal, which followed two weeks of tough negotiations, as weak and insufficient,” opined the Los Angeles Times editorial board on Dec. 13. "It is nonbinding and full of caveats and loopholes.”

It calls for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, rather than phasing out, which many entities, including the United States, the European Union and vulnerable island states, were pushing for.

But the agreement is a milestone nonetheless. There is now a baseline global consensus on the need to move beyond fossil fuels.