Photo courtesy of The President’s Office, Maldives via Wikimedia Commons.
Representatives from nearly 200 parties convened in Saudi Arabia this month for the 28th annual Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change summit.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Science & Environment Editor
As anxious citizens and activists across the globe watched the contentious 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change unfold through their phone screens, one pervading question plagued their minds: Would a fossil fuel phase-out make it into the conference’s final agreement? After a week of divisive debates and negotiations — in which a final settlement seemed almost impossible — the COP28 representatives have now concluded their talks, announcing on Wednesday, Dec. 23, a historical agreement to transition away from all fossil fuel consumption, NBC reported.
According to The New York Times, the final deal calls on countries to instigate an immediate move away from fossil fuels in a “just, orderly, and equitable manner” within this decade and cease additional carbon emissions by 2050.
While the announcement of this decision is unprecedented — according to Bloomberg, this is the first time fossil fuels have been featured in a COP deal — the road to its achievement was markedly complex.
Per the United Nations Climate Change Conference website, the talks have generally danced around fossil fuels since the United Nations Conference of the Parties first began in 1995. In fact, it was only at COP26 that fossil fuels were first explicitly mentioned — albeit in the watered-down, non-committal language of a coal-power “phase-down.”
Finally, at COP28, the question of fossil fuels took center stage as the crucial debate of the conference.
A number of representatives — namely those of countries dependent on oil and gas industries — went back and forth over the rhetoric of a fossil fuel “phase-out” as opposed to a “phase-down” when the final agreement was being drafted. According to The Guardian, while a phase-out suggests either dramatic or complete eradication of fossil-fuel burning, phase-down is a “weaker term” that fails to specify how much fossil fuel burning must decline and by when.
Furthermore, the open nature of the word could potentially allow countries and companies to continue extracting fossil fuels under the guise of carbon capture technology “mopping” it up.”
However, experts such as Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, call this idea a “fantasy” in a Guardian article that cannot be relied on to help limit the rise in global temperatures.
Nonetheless, the vague language of phase-downs was preferred by multiple attending countries at COP28. Given the crucial roles that oil and gas play in many of the attending countries’ economies, several nations, such as Saudi Arabia — the host nation — and Russia, advocated for a focus on cutting climate pollution in general rather than the fossil fuels responsible for it, Reuters reported.
India and China also did “not explicitly [endorse] a fossil fuel phase-out,” but similarly supported a broad call to advance renewable energy, Reuters explained.
However, as many attendees pointed out, to focus on “cutting emissions” rather than directly phasing out fossil fuels ignores the ways in which the two are directly linked, as such a stance is incompatible with the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set by the Paris Agreement, Reuters reported.
Reuters explained that this number demarcates the U.N.’s goal to limit the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees C below pre-industrial levels to avert irreversible climate change. As Marshall Islands Climate Envoy Tina Stege declared in the Reuters article, fossil fuels are “at the root of this crisis,” and “1.5 is not negotiable, and that means an end to fossil fuels.”
According to The Guardian, wealthy countries such as the United States and those in the EU vied for a phase-out of unabated fossil fuels as a proposal for the final negotiation. According to the New York Times, abatement refers to the belief that carbon capture and storage technology can be used to catch and store carbon emissions underground before they can actually enter the atmosphere.
Per The New York Times, like a “phase-down,” unabated fossil fuels signify a weak commitment to phasing out greenhouse gasses because its vagueness could allow countries and companies to continue burning and extracting fossil fuels so long as the emissions are contained in this way.
However, the U.N. climate science panel says carbon capture “cannot take the place of reducing fossil fuel use worldwide,” Reuters reported.
Controversy was also stirred by the fact that, earlier in the conference, the multinational Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries sent a letter urging its member countries to push back against any proposals regarding fossil fuels in the final agreement, Reuters explained.
This occurrence marked the first time OPEC has directly “intervened” in the conference, and, according to Reuters, it shows that the pressure to phase out fossil fuels is not lost on the companies producing them. Notably, Saudi Arabia is the top producer in OPEC and the “de facto leader of the organization,” with Russia also being a member of this “OPEC+” cohort.
Saudi Arabia has attracted significant criticism as the conference’s host country for several reasons, including its involvement with OPEC. According to The Guardian, Sultan Al Jaber — the COP28 President and mediator of the entire conference — caused quite a stir when he said, “There is no science out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what is going to achieve 1.5C.”
In his words, a phase-out would mean taking “the world back into caves.” However, he backtracked on these comments at an emergency press conference days later when he called phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuels “essential” and said his comments had been “misinterpreted.”
Another major topic of conversation was U.S. President Joe Biden’s absence from the conference, a fact which Mount Holyoke Climate Justice Coalition Officer Lily Nemirovsky ’24 believes might suggest that “tackling climate change is not a priority for the U.S.,” as they described in an email to Mount Holyoke News prior to the conference’s conclusion.
“COP is also one of the few international arenas in which all countries, regardless of economic power or population size, have an equal say, and where non-state actors such as civil society organizations and activists participate,” Nemirovsky said. “It begs the question of whether President Biden would skip a meeting in which the U.S. had disproportionate sway.”
While a fossil fuel phase-out may be the obvious decision to those on the outside, the decision was bound up by messy complexities that were on full display during the talks and now in the aftermath of the decision. A Forbes article reported that major consumers of fossil fuels, such as China and India, reserved concern about the possible adoption of a phase-out as it could lead to increased “cost and scarcity” of important energy sources.
Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Ruth Nankabirwa, spoke on behalf of the countries that depend on such resources for their livelihood. “To tell Uganda to stop fossil fuels, it is really, really an insult,” Nankabirwa was quoted as saying in a Forbes article. “It’s like you are telling Uganda to stay in poverty.”
These concerns are echoed by skeptics of the U.N.’s final agreement, who also recognize the entrenched presence of fossil fuels in the global economy that will not simply disappear overnight. A New York Times article acknowledged that the final agreement is “not legally binding” and thereby cannot force any of the countries to actually respond and implement it. Bloomberg similarly described that the actual realization of this goal will not depend on those who put it in writing but “by investors, consumers, and national governments.”
As Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, said, according to The New York Times, “This is not a transition that will happen from one day to the other” as “whole economies and societies are dependent on fossil fuels.” However, the article noted that those in attendance at the conference hoped the agreement would “send a message” to global leaders and companies that a total phase-out is “unstoppable.”
Nemirovsky is “skeptical about the actual progress that is made at COP events” and questions its “symbolic nature.”
While Nemirovsky noted that the conference has made certain strides in the past with COP27’s establishment of a Loss and Damage Fund to provide relief for the low-income countries suffering the greatest effects of the climate crisis, she also asserted that the conference “has definitely not done enough” and is “often wrapped in contradictions.” For example, the fact that Sultan Al Jaber is the host of the conference this year, as well as when COP27 brought “tens of thousands of participants to the resort town of Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt despite recognition that mass tourism had put the town’s coral reefs at risk.”
Photo courtesy of U.N. Climate Change via Flickr.
Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates delivered an address at the COP28 summit. Al-Jaber drew criticism for his views on fossil fuels.
However, Nemirovsky also offers a vote of hope to those who have been following the conference.
“It can definitely be disheartening to follow the news and constantly be reminded of our government’s failures to sufficiently address climate change and reduce its own role in exacerbating it,” she explained. “However, if we, as citizens, decide there is nothing we can do, even the little progress that is being made will cease. … [a]tiny drop in the sea of activism may not solve climate change . . . even if it contributes to 0.1% of a law that will improve the lives of three people in the future, it is worth it to me.”
“If we, as citizens, decide there is nothing we can do, even the little progress that is being made will cease. ”
While decision-making bodies like the U.N. and their large-scale conferences can make ordinary citizens feel like the biggest choices about their futures are entirely out of their hands, Nemirovsky emphasized that there is work that anyone can do.
“Student organizations like CJC harness the collective power of students to generate change in the circles where we have the most impact: our local environment,” she said.
“Our efforts such as raising awareness among the student body about campus sustainability and pressuring the school administration to adhere to its eco-friendly self-imaging will have ripple effects across time and space as the institution continues to operate after we graduate.”
Activists made it abundantly clear to the delegates at the conference that they would not sit idly by as world leaders determined their futures. Throughout the conference, protests for causes ranging from ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war to the release of political detainees have unfolded outside of the building, AP News reported.
According to Reuters, 12-year-old climate activist Licypriya Kangujam from India even “burst on to the stage” at the summit to raise a sign demanding the attendees to “end fossil fuel[s]. Save our planet and our future." Off-site from the conference, the controversial Extinction Rebellion group dyed Venice’s Grand Canal green in protest of COP28, CNN reported.
Although there is much slack to be taken up before actualizing the U.N.’s largely symbolic commitment to fossil fuel phase-out, Nemirovsky is encouraging citizens to keep sight of the bigger picture and know that “any change is better than none,” even if the changes we can affect in our own lives aren’t so publicized or on such a grand scale as the COP conference.