COP28 agreement was no landmark, just more failure in a flawed process with a history of failure

The 28th Conference of Parties in Dubai, United Arab Emirates concluded on December 12th to almost universal disappointment. Like previous summits, COP28 was aimed at charting an ambitious way forward in the global fight against climate change. Instead, the summit ended in disarray, with conflict between the desire of, mainly oil producing, nations to maintain fossil fuels; and those nations for whom a commitment to phase out fossil fuels was a non-negotiable outcome of the conference.

What we got was a weak endorsement of a plan to maybe do something, which compels no action of any nation; and even if it did we know that previous agreements have largely been ignored anyway. Since 2015, governments have failed to mandate action on global warming at every single opportunity. 

Wealthy countries have offered laughably small financial support to nations who will deal with the impact of climate change. The $20m being offered by the US stands out as a slap in the face to countries who need this support. One baseball player has just signed a contract worth three times this amount every year. Which says an awful lot about how seriously the US is taking global warming.

With COP29 being hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan - a major extractor of fossil fuels - next year we will be talking about the same failure.

The failure of COP28 has serious implications for the fight against climate change. The lack of consensus  on the issue of phasing out fossil fuels makes limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels an impossible dream - we are already at 1.3ºC and greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to increase every year. By failing to deliver a mandate to eliminate fossil fuels at COP28 what has been imperilled is the possibility of limiting global warming to 2ºC and all of the impacts that will have.

That means more extreme weather and disrupted weather patterns in the immediate future; faster melting of ice on the polar caps and in glaciers leading to more rapid desalination of the oceans and faster sea level rise. These impacts are at least starting to make themselves felt in some of the countries most responsible for the mess we are in.

So what happens now? Is there anything we can do to offset this failure? Individually we can continue to address our own carbon footprints by changing the way we travel, the food we eat and reducing the number of products we buy and throwaway. If enough people make the change it might be possible to limit the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Realistically though, the only way to have a real effect is to vote to change the politicians we empower to make these agreements on our behalf.