The progress we have made here in Dubai is genuine, if only a starting point.
The first step to solving the climate crisis is truthfully identifying the problem. Today that has happened in the Global Stocktake text: “fossil fuels.”
This COP has seen those with vested fossil fuel interests fight harder than ever to stop progress. This is a travesty. COP negotiations cannot be used as a vehicle for effective fossil fuel industry lobbying.
We need to stop giving special access to fossil fuel advocates at COPs and not let them influence the outcome.
1.5 is on our doorstep. We will experience the worst of the climate crisis right now if we don’t act. We must move faster and cannot wait until COP29 for action.
For too long, global industry has been painting thick green paint over the real elephant in the room of every COP: the continued extraction, burning and subsidisation of fossil fuels.
The progress we have made here in Dubai is genuine, if only a starting point. It is the result of climate champions like US Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry, leaders from across the European Union, Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen and advocates from countries who will be most severely impacted by Lethal Humidity and Heat. We acknowledge COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber who has shown courage.
Together, they fought very hard to overcome the greenwashes and the lies from those who have been a handbrake on progress for too long.
In saying that, despite some progress being seen -- it remains true that today's resolution is riddled with loopholes and get-out-of-jail cards for fossil fuel proliferation. We must unite as activists and green industrialists to hold governments to account for the promises they have made -- and send a persistent signal to industry that business-as-usual for fossil fuel proliferation has ended.