by Cop28’s failure to call for a phase-out of fossil fuels is “devastating” and “dangerous” given the urgent need for action to tackle the climate crisis, scientists have said.
One called it a “tragedy for the planet and our future,” while another said it was the “dream outcome” for the fossil fuel industry.
The UN climate summit ended Wednesday with a compromise agreement calling for a “transition” away from fossil fuels. The stronger term “phasing out” had been backed by 130 of the 198 countries negotiating in Dubai, but was blocked by petrostates including Saudi Arabia.
The agreement was hailed as historic as it was the first citation of fossil fuels, the root cause of the climate crisis, in 30 years of climate negotiations. But scientists said the agreement contained many loopholes and did not match the severity of the climate emergency.
“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,” said Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. “The ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. “It’s like promising your doctor that you’ll ‘stop using donuts’ after you’re diagnosed with diabetes.”
Dr Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of the science journal Nature, said: “The science is clear: fossil fuels must go. “World leaders will fail their people and the planet unless they accept this reality.”
A Nature editorial said the failure to phase out was “more than a missed opportunity,” was “dangerous” and ran “against the core goals set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement” of limiting global warming to 1 .5°C. (2.7F) above preindustrial levels.
“The climate does not care who emits greenhouse gases,” the editorial continues. “There is only one viable path forward, and that is for us all to eliminate almost all fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”
Sir David King, chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “The wording of the agreement is weak. Ensuring that 1.5°C remains viable will require a full commitment to a series of far-reaching measures, including the complete phase-out of fossil fuels.”
There was a gap between the stark declaration of the emissions cuts needed and the proposed actions to achieve those reductions, he said: “The Cop28 text recognizes that ‘deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions’ are necessary. ‘ to stay at the expected level. line with 1.5C. But then it lists a bunch of efforts that have no chance of achieving it.”
Scientists said the loopholes included calls to “accelerate” carbon capture and storage to trap emissions from burning fossil fuels, an option that can play a minor role at best.
Related: Cop28 failed to stop deadly fossil fuel expansion plans. And now that?
Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London, said: “Until fossil fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more expensive and more uncertain place to live. With every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the front lines of climate change and many will die.”
Professor Martin Siegert, polar scientist and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter, said: “The science is perfectly clear. Cop28, by not making a clear statement to stop the burning of fossil fuels, is a tragedy for the planet and our future. “The world is warming faster and harder than the police are responding to it.”
Professor Mike Berners-Lee, a carbon footprint expert at Lancaster University, said: “Cop28 is the fossil fuel industry’s dream outcome, because it looks like progress, but it isn’t.”
Dr Elena Cantarello, senior lecturer in sustainability sciences at Bournemouth University, UK, said: “It is hugely disappointing to see how a very small number of countries have been able to put short-term national interests ahead of the future of the people and nature. .”
Dr James Dyke, associate professor of Earth system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said: “Cop28 needed to issue an unequivocal statement. While the deal’s call for the need to abandon fossil fuels is welcome, it has numerous caveats and loopholes that risk rendering it meaningless.
“That this agreement has been hailed as a milestone is more a measure of previous failures than any radical change when it comes to the increasingly urgent need to quickly stop burning coal, oil and gas.”
The scientists’ comments were echoed those of Anne Rasmussenthe chief negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States group, whose speech at the closing of Cop28 won a standing ovation from delegates: “It is not enough that we refer to science and then make agreements that ignore what science tells us . We need to do.”
Climate science was at the center of a dispute that dominated the first week of the summit after The Guardian revealed comments by Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber in which he said: “There is no science out there, nor any scenario.” out there, that says that the phasing out of fossil fuels is what will allow us to reach 1.5°C.” Al Jaber later said: “I have said time and again that the gradual reduction and phasing out of fossil fuels is inevitable. In fact, it is essential.”
Dr Lisa Schipper, professor of development geography at the University of Bonn in Germany, said: “The police president’s initial statement about the lack of science behind phasing out fossil fuels sent shockwaves through scientists, especially those who had contributed to the Intergovernmental Conference. Panel on Climate Change [most recent report]as the science in the report is so clear that fossil fuels must be phased out to avoid a point of no return.”
Related: Cop28 is a farce set to fail, but there are other ways we can try to save the planet | George Monbiot
Mann said police rules needed to be reformed, such as allowing supermajorities to vote on decisions over the objections of resisting petrostates and banning oil executives like Al Jaber, who runs the Emirates state oil company. United Arabs, chair future summits.
“Mend it, don’t finish it,” Mann said. “Police are our only multilateral framework for negotiating global climate policies. But the fact that Cop28 has not made any significant progress at a time when our window of opportunity to limit warming below catastrophic levels is closing, is a source of great concern.”
