Why the COP30 climate conference is unwilling to create a roadmap to phase out oil, coal and gas
There is a growing demand that COP30 climate conference in Brazil creates a global roadmap for the phaseout of the use of fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas
The COP30 international climate summit is underway in Belem, Brazil. It has 145 ‘Agenda Items’ to discuss and come to some sort of consensus about. And they are extremely important, like increasing climate finance to poor and developing countries, finding ways to reduce planet-heating greenhouse gases (GHG) like CO2 and methane, and protecting the rights of indigenous people. But the single most important item is the one that is not on the menu. And that is reaching a consensus on a timeline for phasing out the use of fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.
Ten years on from the historic 2015 Paris climate accords, the core reason why the world is heating up so fast is still not being discussed. And that is because of two reasons: a complete lack of financial assistance from rich countries and the vested interests of petro-states and fossil fuel lobbyists. Countries like Brazil and India want to retain the right to burn fossil fuels to build their developing economies, while demanding that industrialized nations—which have caused the climate crisis through nearly two hundred years of oil and coal use—be proactive in switching to renewable energy.
Rich nations like the EU countries, Australia and the US, meanwhile, want everyone to make that shift, but are unwilling to pay poorer countries to compensate. Then there is China, which is making incredible strides in producing renewable energy technologies, but is unwilling to make any written commitment on phasing out fossil fuel use. Add to that petro-states like Saudi Arabia and Russia, which veto any move to curb the extraction of oil and gas reserves. Finally, there are the poor and highly vulnerable island nations that may become completely uninhabitable within a generation due to rising sea levels. Mix in all these competing viewpoints, and what we get every year is more status quo, where vague promises are made, very few kept, and real climate ambition is deflected into the future.
10 years since Paris
At present, according to available national climate policies (called NDCs or Nationally Determined Contributions) the world is on track to heat up by 2.4-2.8 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) by 2100. This is basically a catastrophic amount of heating, not just because of the amount of heat it would lock in, but also because of the speed with which it’s happening. If the status quo is preserved any longer, we are looking at widespread disaster—ranging from deadlier storms to the death of coral reefs, higher sea levels, longer and more brutal heatwaves and widespread crop failure and water shortage. All the things we take for granted, even in the worst of times, will be gone forever. The world’s governments need to show great urgency and act now.
The only silver lining is that the world has come a long way since the Paris Agreement. After all, in 2015, the world was on course to heating up by nearly 4-5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century! Once the Paris deal was signed, it became official policy to try and keep heating to below 2 degrees Celsius. In 2018, the global ambition was updated to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Paris is proof that once policies start being set through multilateralism, things start changing.
It would have been unthinkable in 2015 that renewable energy sources like solar would become the cheapest form of electricity ever; or that in 2025, global energy generation from renewables would outpace that from fossil fuels. In fact, it is progress like this that is taken as an indicator by climate optimists that the COP process maybe slow, but it works.
Not fast enough
But while every tenth of a degree of avoided warming makes a massive difference, things aren’t changing fast enough. And the reason for that is the Gordian Knot I described above: Far too many conflicting interests, a sinister rise in populist rightwing governments that deny climate change or play it down, and a concurrent decline in global multilateralism. After all it is difficult to agree in a world where tariff wars are going on, not to mention the bloody genocidal ones.
According to the landmark 2018 report of the UN’s top climate science body, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), in order to achieve the 1.5 degree goal, global GHG emissions need to decrease by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. Doing so, the scientific consensus goes, the 1.5 degree barrier would be temporarily breached before coming back down.
But this has just not happened, for the reasons I mentioned above. Instead of going down, global GHG emissions are rising every year. The latest Emissions Gap Report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), found that in 2024, global emissions increased by 2.3% above the previous year, and that even the rate of increase was higher! The report notes that the world is completely “off target" to control climate change, and that if we are serious about doing anything, then there needs to be a 55% reduction in emissions by 2035, compared with 2019 levels.
Time is literally of the essence, which is why there is a growing demand that COP30 create a global roadmap for the phasing out of fossil fuels. In fact, former US vice president and climate activist Al Gore even took to social media on Monday to say this: “There is a huge momentum to develop a roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels. Agreeing to create this roadmap would make COP30 a major success…But Saudi Arabia is demanding that it be vetoed. The rest of the world must stand up to the obscene greed and recklessness of those who want to continue to profit from the primary cause of the climate crisis."
Climate Change Tracker is a monthly column on the climate crisis.
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