A draft agreement from the UN’s COP28 climate summit has dropped references to the phaseout of fossil fuels, triggering a backlash from countries that accuse Saudi Arabia and other petrostates of thwarting efforts to tackle global warming.
The document, which will have to be agreed on by almost 200 countries at the summit in Dubai, sets out a range of actions that countries “could” take to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
This includes reducing “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero [carbon emissions] by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science”.