‘The age of fossil fuels will end’: Australia’s Chris Bowen hails Cop28 agreement

Climate change minister says deal is not perfect but ‘transition away’ from oil and gas sends clear message to investors

Climate change minister Chris Bowen says the Cop28 climate summit sent a clear message that “our future is in clean energy and the age of fossil fuels will end”, but acknowledged it did not go as far as most countries wanted.

Nearly 200 countries agreed to a deal that for the first time called on all nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis.

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Cop28: landmark deal to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels agreed – as it happened

This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

We are shortly expecting a plenary to take place. The plenary sessions are the decision-making sessions of the Cops. They can be formal, in which a final decision will be made at the end, or informal (also called stocktaking), in which the purpose is to get reaction to the text before a new version is worked on. This one is informal to begin with, according to the UNFCCC, which suggests we may still be some time away from the end of this Cop.

In practice, the plenaries means every country gets a chance to share their view of the new text in an open forum, with discussion and debate taking place in the hope of reaching a final agreement. Sometimes this can be quite dramatic, and it is a rare moment in which countries from around the world, developed and developing, have to listen to each other. We will be following it live and posting excerpts from the country delegate speeches, as well as ongoing wider reaction to the text.

If this text is adopted … it will show a collective recognition that we must turn away from fossil fuels and move towards a cleaner future. Champions for this vision – both small island states and major economies – have worked tirelessly overnight. However, it is clear that not everyone is ready to admit the truth of what’s needed. This text alone might help avoid disaster in Dubai but it does not avoid disaster for the planet.”

I suspect that the language in this new draft text on the Global Stocktake, calling for countries to contribute to a transition away from fossil fuels in energy to achieve net zero by 2050, will be too weak for some Parties.

For the first time in three decades of climate negotiations the words fossil fuels have ever made it into a Cop outcome. We are finally naming the elephant in the room. The genie is never going back into the bottle and future Cops will only turn the screws even more on dirty energy.

Although we’re sending a strong signal with one hand, there’s still too many loopholes on unproven and expensive technologies like carbon capture and storage which fossil fuel interests will try and use to keep dirty energy on life support.

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Cop28 live: UK accused of ‘outrageous dereliction of leadership’ as climate change minister leaves conference

Fury as Graham Stuart returns to London as Caroline Lucas says UK has ‘obliterated its moral authority’

Tuesday morning at Cop28 and we’re back in a waiting game. Heads of delegation met until the early hours, mostly expressing their deep unhappiness with the draft text produced by the summit presidency late Monday afternoon.

The scheduled end of the two-week conference has come and gone – that was 11am local – and as yet there is no new text to replace the document from yesterday. Anybody who says they know when this will end is guessing.

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Elements of new Cop28 text are ‘fully unacceptable’, say EU climate chiefs – as it happened

EU’s climate commissioner says there must be ‘deeper discussions with many other partners’. This live blog is closed

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has been speaking to reporters at Cop28, underlining the significance of the next few hours of negotiations.

“We are in a race against time. As I said at the opening of Cop28, our planet is minutes to midnight for the 1.5C limit. And the clock keeps ticking. Cop28 is scheduled to wrap up tomorrow, but there are still large gaps that need to be bridged. Now is the time for maximum ambition and maximum flexibility,” he said.

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Cop28: ‘failure is not an option,’ says summit president – as it happened

Sultan Al Jaber calls for countries to come together amid disagreements over the future of climate action

China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’

There is some more food-related news from the conference today, writes Fiona Harvey.

The Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF) launched on Sunday, a group that’s being called the “high ambition coalition for food”. It has Brazil, Sierra Leone and Norway as co-chairs, and other prominent members include Rwanda and Cambodia.

Strengthen national visions and food systems transformation pathways, inclusive of 10 priority action areas and consistent with science-based targets.

Update Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS),​​ and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) in line with these updated National Food System Transformation Pathways and/or Implementation Plans, by 2025 at the latest.

Report annually on targets and priority intervention areas

“Peasant family farmers, Indigenous and local communities, forest collectors, pastoralists, fisherfolk, and agricultural workers, are among the populations most harshly affected by climate change worldwide. Yet they are also the central actors who can sustainably transform food systems. Supporting their livelihoods through specifically tailored public policies is essential to achieve an agroecological transition towards healthy, resilient and sustainable food systems.”

Let’s face it: climate summits are broken. The delegates talk and talk, while Earth systems slide towards deadly tipping points. Since the climate negotiations began in 1992 more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has been released worldwide than in all preceding human history. This year is likely to set a new emissions record. They are talking us to oblivion.

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‘Come with solutions’: Cop28 president calls for compromise in final meetings

Sultan Al Jaber urges nations to be flexible as talks reach impasse over whether to phase out or phase down fossil fuels

Ministers and negotiators must come to the vital final meetings of Cop28 without prepared statements, without rigid red lines, and be prepared to compromise, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Sultan Al Jaber, whose position is now pivotal to the talks as they enter their final days, on Sunday convened a majlis of all countries, a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates.

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Cop28: petrostate Azerbaijan to host next UN climate summit in 2024 – as it happened

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The other day, our eagle-eyed reporter Patrick Greenfield spotted former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng striding through the Cop complex.

We all wondered what on earth Kwasi, who was at the top of a government which tried to overturn the UK’s fracking ban, could be doing at Cop, and whether the chancellor who crashed the UK economy was a vital part of the negotiating team.

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Cop28 failing on climate adaptation finance so far, African group warns

Continent’s chief negotiator says an agreement for fair and equitable funding is a matter of life and death

Fair and equitable finance for climate adaptation is a matter of life and death for the African continent, but talks at Cop28 so far have failed to deliver, the chief negotiator for the African group has warned.

Adaptation is being discussed as part of the global stocktake (GST), the assessment of where the world is on delivering the commitments made in the 2015 Paris agreement. The long-awaited global goal on adaptation (GGA) – a collective commitment proposed by the African group in 2013 and established under the Paris agreement – to drive political action and finance for adaptation on the same scale as mitigation, is also due to be completed in Dubai.

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Middle-class fear of green policies fuels rise of far right, Colombia’s Petro warns

Guerrilla leader turned president says, faced with having to reduce their carbon consumption, upper classes fear ‘the barbarians are coming’

Middle-class fears of losing a high standard of living because of green policies is driving the rise of the far right across the world, the president of Colombia has warned.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian at the Cop28 UN climate summit, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, said the world had to find carbon-free ways of being prosperous, and that his country’s rich biodiversity would be the basis of its wealth after phasing out fossil fuels.

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Cop28: president says summit ‘has already made history’ as negotiations enter final days – as it happened

Sultan Al Jaber holds press conference at start of second week as summit focuses on children, education and food

Canada has been asked by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, to help develop language on the potential phase down or phase out of fossil fuels, its environment minister told reporters on Friday morning.

Steven Guilbeault, a former activist who is environment minister for the fourth largest oil and gas producer in the world, announced that Canada would require its fossil fuel industry to cut its emissions between 35% to 38% below 2019 levels starting in 2030 on Thursday.

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Australia news live: Daniel Andrews fires up over ‘Dictator Dan’ moniker; festival-goers warned about heatwave conditions

Former Victorian premier gives first interview after resignation, saying ‘the haters hate and the rest vote Labor’. Follow the day’s news live

James Ashby to stand for One Nation in Queensland seat

James Ashby, the chief of staff to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, will stand for the party in the seat of Keppel at next year’s Queensland state election, AAP reports.

The Nationals are dead in Queensland’s parliament while the Liberals are lurching further left in their attempts to secure inner-Brisbane seats.

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Visualised: how all of G20 is missing climate goals — but some nations are closer than others

As world leaders gather at Cop28, these charts show how far away the major economies are from their targets

Not a single G20 country has policies in place that are consistent with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C and meeting their “fair share” of emissions reduction.

The assessment, based on data up to 5 December provided by the Climate Action Tracker, comes as leaders gather in Dubai for the Cop28 conference.

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Beach? Shopping? Sleep? How Cop28 is spending its rest day

The 80,000 delegates are thinking of how best to unwind from the climate summit ‘whirlwind’ in Dubai on their only day off

From the world’s largest waterpark to an indoor ski resort in a shopping centre, Cop28 delegates will have plenty of options to choose from on their only day off at the climate summit.

After an exhausting week of negotiations, events and protests, the 80,000 delegates in the United Arab Emirates will have a chance to enjoy Dubai ahead of the final push.

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Cop28: UN climate chief warns nations not to ‘fall into the trap of point-scoring’ – as it happened

Simon Stiell says’ ‘we need highest ambition, not point scoring or lowest common denominator politics’. This live blog is closed

Countries negotiating at Cop28 must not fall into the trap of point-scoring and “lowest common denominator politics”, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, has said.

Stiell, who is executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, the structure under the auspices of which the climate summit is held, spoke at a press conference in Dubai as Cop28 reached its midpoint. He said:

All governments must give their negotiators clear marching orders. We need highest ambition, not point scoring or lowest common denominator politics.

We have a starting text on the table … but it’s a grab bag of wishlists and heavy on posturing. The key now is to sort the wheat from the chaff.

For all intents and purposes, moving towards the phase-out of fossil fuel combustion is necessary to keep the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement within reach.

Scenarios consistent with this goal require a complete phase-out of coal by 2050 and rapid phase-down of oil and gas (halved every decade). After 2050 the world needs to rapidly move into net negative emissions, particularly after a number of decades of 1.5C overshoot.

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Mary Robinson reiterates call for rapid phase-out of fossil fuels

Former Ireland leader issues firm response in row over comments made to her by Cop28 president

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, has called for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, in a diplomatic but firm response to the row over comments made to her by the Cop28 president, which were revealed by the Guardian this week.

In a live online event, Sultan Al Jaber had told Robinson there was “no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C”, a view strongly rejected by many scientists. As well as running the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai, Al Jaber is the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc.

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Climate funding must be faster and easier, says deputy PM of flood-hit Somalia

Salah Jama said vulnerable countries face ‘bureaucratic bottlenecks’ in receiving loss and damage funds and are often forced to take them on as debt

Funding to support vulnerable countries to repair the irreversible damage caused by the climate crisis needs to be fast tracked and easy to access, Somalia’s deputy prime minister has said.

Salah Jama said a deal on a loss and damage fund made on the first day of Cop28 last week was “welcome news for frontline states like Somalia” but, he said: “Implementation needs to be fast tracked. Bureaucratic bottlenecks in accessing the financing have to be fixed.”

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Australia ends finance for fossil fuel expansion overseas – now focus turns to local subsidies

Albanese government announces at Cop28 it will phase out offshore support for coal, oil and gas within a year

The Australian government has been praised for joining a global partnership committed to stopping billions of dollars in foreign aid and loans being spent on fossil fuel expansion, but the decision has also prompted renewed calls for it to reconsider polluting subsidies at home.

The Albanese government announced at the Cop28 climate summit that it had joined 40 other countries in signing up to the clean energy transition partnership, an agreement first reached in Glasgow two years ago.

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‘The science compels: phase out fossil fuels’ – Mary Robinson responds after Cop28 row – live

Former president of Republic of Ireland makes first comments since Sultan Al Jaber told her a fossil fuel phase out could mean ‘going back into caves’

Alok Sharma, an MP for the Conservative party in Britain and president of Cop26 that was held in Glasgow two years ago, has made some comments about Al Jaber’s presidency: “everyone should be questioned,” he says.

Environment ministers from Germany and Colombia have led an open letter calling for the inclusion of nature in the global stocktake outcome, which countries are negotiating at Cop28.

“The GST provides a critical moment to recognize the importance of just and inclusive means of implementation, and address the significant finance gap for nature-based solutions,” said Muhamad. “In particular, the involvement and respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities is critical, in addition to the urgent need to align financial flows to enable the transformations required to deliver the Paris Agreement goals.”

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Australia urged not to rely on ‘drug dealer’s defence’ for gas exports and help wean Japan off fossil fuels

Diplomats for Climate group says if government wants to use that defence ‘it needs to be the dealer who takes their clients to rehab and supports them off their habit’

The Albanese government should do more to leverage its relationship with Japan – arguably the world’s most important energy partnership – to help its trading partner move away from gas and towards a rapid and ambitious decarbonisation, former diplomats say.

Diplomats for Climate, an organisation supported by more than 100 former Australian officials, says “the future of gas lies in the ground”, but that a ban on new fossil fuel developments – the focus of a growing community campaign backed by scientific evidence – would not cut global emissions unless international demand was reduced.

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Coalition to have sizeable contingent at Cop28 despite Peter Dutton jibe at climate change minister’s attendance

Frontbenchers Paul Fletcher and Bridget McKenzie part of group of nine MPs who will be in Dubai funded by Coalition for Conservation and Environmental Leadership Australia

A significant contingent of Coalition MPs – including federal opposition frontbenchers Paul Fletcher and Bridget McKenzie – will fly out to the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai funded by two ginger groups.

Despite Peter Dutton last week making fun of the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, during an interview on 2GB for travelling to the United Nations-led international climate change conference and “incurring all those emissions” – a significant delegation of Coalition MPs will also attend the summit and associated events.

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