"Climate activists and countries hard hit by climate disasters seek to break the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on global climate talks."

"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Under a blanket of petro-smog, more than half the 198 countries  in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change called for a fossil fuel phaseout on the second day of COP28, marking a turning point after 27 years of climate negotiations.

Since the talks began at COP1 in Berlin in the spring of 1995, member nations have focused on temperature targets, voluntary emissions trading programs and other approaches that never addressed the root cause of the problem—the massive global increase of coal, oil and gas burning. At COP26 in Glasgow two years ago, the final conference documents for the first time included a timid reference to fossil fuels.

But Friday, 106 countries—27 member states of the European Union and the 79 members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States—finally took the issue head on, calling for a fossil fuel phaseout, an immediate end to all new oil and gas production and clear end dates for fossil fuel production.

“The shift towards a climate neutral economy, in line with the 1.5 degree Celsius  goal, will require the global phase out of unabated fossil fuels and a peak in their consumption already in this decade,” those countries said in a joint statement."

Bob Berwyn reports for Inside Climate News December 4, 2023. [2]

SEE ALSO:

"U.S. Signs On To Push To Phase Out ‘Unabated’ Coal" (Washington Post) [3]