Former Vice President Al Gore said the United Nations’ annual climate conference is on the “verge of complete failure” with world leaders set to adopt an agreement that doesn’t include a pledge to eventually “phase out” the use of fossil fuels.
His comments came as the organisers of the summit in Dubai, known as COP28, released a draft of a new climate pact akin to the landmark deal struck in Paris in 2015.
Many countries and environmentalists had pushed for a new accord to include the phrase “phase out” when referring to polluting oil, coal and gas. But the draft released this week did not include that language, instead offering up ways countries could opt to cut their greenhouse gas emissions “so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050.”
Gore said that pledge would not go nearly far enough as scientists warn the planet is already seeing the effects of climate change in the form of extreme weather, drought, flood and fire.
“The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared,” Gore wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously.”
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said the draft didn’t “meet the expectations” of the summit in a closed-door meeting on Monday night, per a report in Politico. He added that major polluters, including China and India, have expressed they would not accept any deal that included the phrases “phase out” or “phase down.”
The secretary-general of OPEC recently called on the bloc’s members to reject any language meant to scale back fossil fuel production rather than emissions.
Oil producing nations and fossil fuel lobbyists have generally focused on touting optimistic carbon capture technology that would allow them to continue producing oil and gas. But scientists say those plans would not stop climate change as current technology would not be able to capture all of the emissions the planet spews into the atmosphere.
Gore recently said it was “ridiculous” that the oil-rich United Arab Emirates was hosting the climate summit at all, pointing directly at COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber. Al Jaber is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which provides about 3% of the world’s oil. He recently came under fire amid reports he secretly lobbied countries and business leaders to increase exports of fossil fuels in the lead-up to the event.
“Well, it’s kind of ridiculous,” Gore told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It should not be, although it’s not so much that it’s in a country that produces oil. It’s the appointment of the CEO of one of the biggest and least responsible companies on the planet to be the head of the conference.”
“The people of our world deserve to have some confidence that this process has integrity, and we’ve been seeing the fossil fuel polluters try to manipulate this process for a long time,” he added.
Gore said Monday night those at summit still had a day to amend the draft, or risk the wrath of future generations.
“In order to prevent COP28 from being the most embarrassing and dismal failure in 28 years of international climate negotiations, the final text must include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels,” he wrote. “Anything else is a massive step backwards.”