Key events
The UN Development Programme has published a video explainer on the issues at play at this year’s Cop climate summit. Take a look if you need a quick and easily absorbed rundown of what delegates will be discussing over the next fortnight.
The United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s foremost fossil fuel producing nations, was always going to be an interesting choice for the Cop28 climate talks. Highlighting the apparent contradiction is a tweet from one attendee showing this incongruous sight from her hotel room window.
Got into Dubai late last night. Opened up my curtains in my hotel this morning to what I now know is the largest single site natural gas power generation facility in the world. Fitting. I am going to stare at this through the haze of pollution for two weeks. Welcome to #cop28. pic.twitter.com/pocJirYMvR
— Tzeporah Berman (@Tzeporah) November 29, 2023
Ajit Niranjan
People must balance outrage and optimism after a “hellish summer” of extreme weather, the UN’s former climate chief has urged at the start of the Cop28 climate summit, writes Ajit Narinjan, the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent.
“We have to keep the outrage really high because we are so darn late,” said Christiana Figueres, a veteran negotiator hailed as the architect of the Paris climate agreement.
She pointed to the weak policies that governments have set in order to cut planet-heating pollution and the $7tn with which they directly and indirectly subsidise fossil fuels.
But there were reasons for optimism that could stop people falling into “a dark rabbit hole”, she added. “I do make a conscious choice every morning to say ‘yes, I know what all the bad news is’ – that’s easy to get because that just screams at you from whatever news feed you have – but also, what is positive that is going out there? What are the disruptive pieces that are real, strong evidence of the fact that this is changing?”
Speaking to a small group of reporters on Monday, Figueres highlighted the plummeting cost of renewable energy and the growth of electric cars as two areas where positive changes were happening faster and faster.
Dawn has broken over the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai. Here are the first few pictures appearing on the news wires of the scene there this morning as the conference gets underway.
Damian Carrington
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN climate convention, the international framework which governs Cop28, has given a call to arms to all nations as the summit begins:
This year’s climate conference comes as the crisis enters a new phase – and shows its full force, harming billions of people, and costing trillions. Now everyone is on the frontlines. No country is immune.
Yet most governments are still taking baby steps, when bold strides are urgently needed. So, the problem is clear: business-as-usual is breaking our planet. At the COP28 climate conference, leaders must get to work fixing it.
It’s great that over 160 world leaders are coming, but COP28 cannot be just a photo-op. Leaders must deliver in Dubai – the message is clear.
They must agree to triple renewable energy this decade, and double energy efficiency. And COP28 must show a clear agreement to leave fossil fuel dependency behind. Only renewable energy offers safe, affordable, secure energy, as well as far more jobs, stronger economic growth, less pollution and better health for people in every country.
Developing nations – who did least to cause the crisis – have been starved of climate justice and resilience for too long. Last year’s COP in Egypt delivered an historic Loss & Damage Fund. This year’s cop in the UAE must put meat on the bone of this fund. That means putting real money on the table. Table scraps won’t cut it.
In a fractured world, climate action is a chance to unite around a common cause: survival, justice, prosperity. In short – Divisions will destroy us. But solutions can save us. It’s time for us all to get to work.
Guterres calls for complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels
Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, has said this year’s Cop climate talks should aim for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels, insisting of the 1.5C climate goal: “It is not dead, it’s alive.”
Speaking to French state-backed news agency AFP before embarking on his flight to attend the conference in Dubai, Guterres said:
Obviously I am strongly in favour of language that includes (a) phaseout, even with a reasonable time framework.
We have the potential, the technologies and the capacity and the money – because the money is available, it’s a question of making sure it goes into the right direction- to do what is necessary, not only to keep the 1.5 degrees alive, but alive and well.
The only thing that is still lacking is political will.
Scientists are increasingly warning the goal of restricting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels looks ever more unlikely, an outcome that nations have agreed would be disastrous for human civilisation.
Since the goal was agreed at the Paris climate talks in 2015, nations’ actions have fallen far short. Some countries have called for the final statement of Cop28, which requires unanimous agreement, to explicitly call for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption – which would be a historic first.
But Guterres went further, telling AFP a simple promise to reduce fossil fuels would not be enough. “I think it would be a pity if we would stay in a vague and noncommittal ‘phase-down’ whose real meaning would not be obvious for anybody,” he said.
So what is a Conference of the Parties? My colleague Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor and a veteran of multiple Cops, has written a handy explainer, setting out what it is all about. She writes:
For almost three decades, world governments have met nearly every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way.
Cop stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 28th iteration, and promises to be a difficult follow-up to last year, when developing countries celebrated victory on key issues of climate finance.
For more answers to your Cop28-related questions, including “Why do we need a Cop anyway?”, read more by clicking the link below.
Good morning! This is Damien Gayle, on the very first day of the 28th Conference of Parties climate change summit, or Cop28.
The Guardian will be liveblogging the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look forward to your contributions: please email me on [email protected] with thoughts and suggestions. Alan Evans ([email protected]) will be taking over the blog later on.
Today, the first day of the conference, will be focused around the opening ceremony. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will not be attending but other world leaders will be arriving today, including Rishi Sunak.
Negotiators are hoping to make strong progress this Cop, and Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the summit, has told my colleague Fiona Harvey that an “unprecedented outcome” that would keep alive hopes of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C is within reach.
But it is all still to play for. The US’s veteran climate negotiator, John Kerry, speaking to journalists in Dubai yesterday, said: “I feel confident that we will make progress [at Cop28]. The question is: how much progress?”
