Australia Backed a Global Transition From Fossil Fuels at COP28 – But Scientists Are 'Devastated'

For the first time in the 28-year history of COP – the Conference of Parties where close to 100,000 delegates from United Nations member states meet annually to discuss the world’s collective action on the climate crisis – fossil fuels were called out. 

The two week COP28 summit in Dubai ended on Wednesday with the 198 countries in attendance backing a deal that calls for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels to stave off the worst effects of climate change. 

The deal says all nations agree to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who is also the head of Abu Dhabi’s national oil company, said it was “unprecedented” and “historic”. 

“We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5C in reach,” he said. “It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus. We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever,” he said.

But the outcome didn’t come easily. 130 of the 198 countries actually pushed for a stronger term “phase-out” to be written, but the compromise was reached after several countries including Saudi Arabia resisted. 

Climate scientists say it was “devastating” and “dangerous” the COP couldn’t agree to a phase-out, but a “dream outcome” for the fossil fuel industry.

“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,” Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said at the conference. 

“To ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. It’s like promising your doctor that you will ‘transition away from doughnuts’ after being diagnosed with diabetes.”

The chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group David King said: “The wording of the deal is feeble. Ensuring 1.5C remains viable will require total commitment to a range of far-reaching measures, including full fossil fuel phase-out.”

Australia was one of the key proponents of the word “transition” being chosen.

After the deal was sealed, federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen praised the efforts and said, “The message [COP28] sends is clear: that all nations of the world have acknowledged the reality that our future is in clean energy, and the age of fossil fuels will end”.

But he acknowledged that it wasn’t what many of our neighbouring nations, and those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, wanted.

“This decision is not what everybody would have written themselves as they got off their plane, and that’s true of the Pacific as it’s true Saudi Arabia, but it is a clear direction,” he said.

“And for countries that are at the front line of climate change – their voices are being heard. And as far and as long as we have anything to do with it, they will continue to be heard, and continue to be heard even more loudly.”

UN climate chief Simon Stiell said COP28 had achieved much of what it set out to, and that without the UN climate treaty that legally binds nations to limit global heating to 1.5C, the world would be on track for global heating 5C above pre-industrial levels – what he called “a death sentence for our species”.

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Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.