Almost 200 countries, parties to the Paris Agreement, will gather this week in Dubai for Cop28, the annual UN negotiations on how best to cut carbon emissions and stabilise the planet. The writing is on the wall; switching off fossil fuels is the single most important measure that will turn off the carbon tap. Yet short-term political expediency, self interest and the dominance of the oil and gas sector – especially within the ranks of petrostates and big emitter economies – will as usual attempt to stall the green transition.
The fact that the summit is being hosted by the UAE, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, will heighten tensions. There are, however, many different factors applying this year, including the hosts’ extensive agenda, which may force a more substantive outcome. It may even tip the dial away from phasing down fossil fuels towards phasing them out, while scaling up climate finance for vulnerable countries.
It is a critical time, in a year when extreme weather events provided shocking indications of what runaway global warming looks like. The first “global stocktake” since the Paris pact was adopted will reveal how far short countries are from their commitments, Ireland included.
Every significant scientific evaluation in the build up indicates that the world is very far off-track, so much so that net zero seems unlikely by mid century and humanity is unlikely to contain average global temperatures to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, let alone 1.5 degrees, which are the crucial Paris targets.
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The UN Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report” confirms human activity “is breaking all the wrong records on climate change”. Greenhouse gas emissions and the global average temperature are hitting new highs. This inevitably “means extreme weather events are occurring more often, developing faster and becoming more intense”, it warns. Its headline figures are hugely concerning. Climate pledges for 2030 put the world on track for limiting the global temperature rise to between 2.5 to 2.9 degrees above pre-industrial levels in this century.
The stakes could not be higher, and there is a grave risk that the Israel-Gaza conflict will distract participants and undermine future co-operation. As it is, it is going to take a massive and urgent shift to get back on track – and to avoid climate scientists coming back to issue the same unheeded warnings, like a broken record.
The world has made progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Warming projections based on emissions at that time were way higher than they are now. A renewables revolution is gathering momentum. So it is all down to politicians. They should start by acknowledging the gaps and working together to chart a course to accelerate climate action like never before.