Delegates at the COP28 international climate summit on Wednesday agreed to move away from fossil fuel consumption in a first of its kind deal signaling the possible end of the oil age, although some participants complained the pact did not go far enough.
The agreement, announced by the president of the COP28 meeting, Sultan al-Jaber, to a standing ovation, commits the international community to avoid the worst effects of climate change and to move to a low-carbon future.
It is the first time a COP summit has agreed on a move away from fossil fuels, but the language stops short of calling for them to be phased out, to the disappointment of some nations.
The agreement was subject to two weeks of complex negotiations and calls for meaningful and sustained action to reduce carbon emissions in order to limit global average temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The text, which runs to 21 pages and more than 11,000 words, “expresses serious concern that 2023 is set to be the warmest year on record,” and calls for “urgent” action to keep the 1.5 degree limit in reach.
Al-Jaber stressed the need for concrete action, telling the summit: “We are what we do, not what we say.”
Wopke Hoekstra, the European commissioner for climate action, told journalists the agreement was “the beginning of the end for fossil fuels.”
“This is a call to action that heralds an irreversible pivot from the dirty energy of the past and charts the course toward a more equitable clean energy future,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group based in New York, in an emailed statement.
“It’s time now to turn global ambition into climate action — and there’s not a moment to lose,” he added.
Ember, a climate change think tank based in London, said in a statement on X that the agreement marks “the first time the world has recognized the scale of ambition required this decade to build…
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