Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Frenzy at COP28

The activist demand that the U.S. phase out all fossil fuels in eight years is borderline insane.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates—"A fast, fair, fully funded, and forever phase-out of fossil fuels" demanded climate activist Brandon Wu from ActionAid USA at a press conference today at the United Nations' 28th Climate Change Conference (COP28).

How fast? According a new report endorsed by ActionAid and 200 other activist groups, rich countries like the U.K. and the U.S. should forever cease all extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas by 2031.

What exactly does fair and fully funded mean? Greenpeace Regional Campaigns Manager Ahmed El Droubi at an earlier press conference convened by the 350.org activist group citing a June 2023 study suggested that the wealthy developed countries owe "$170 trillion in climate debt" to poor countries. For reference, world gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was just over $100 trillion. And it is worth considering how low world GDP would now stand if humanity had forsworn the vast improvements in living standards, health, longevity, and education made possible by the energy supplied by fossil fuels.

Despite the expansion of wind and solar power, fossil fuels still account for 82 percent of the world's primary energy. In the U.S., fossil fuels supply 79 percent of the primary energy that Americans consume, with nuclear accounting for 8 percent. It is not at all plausible that the U.S. would be able to completely and forever phase out fossil fuels over the next eight years. In fact, such a demand sounds borderline insane.

As it stands, the current negotiating text of the Global Stocktake document, which would be the principal output of COP28, retains several options calling for the phase-out of fossil fuels.

Option 1: A phase out of fossil fuels in line with best available science;

Option 2: Phasing out of fossil fuels in line with best available science, the
IPCC's 1.5 pathways and the principles and provisions of the Paris Agreement;

Option 3: A phase-out of unabated fossil fuels recognizing the need for a peak
in their consumption in this decade and underlining the importance for the
energy sector to be predominantly free of fossil fuels well ahead of 2050;

Option 4: Phasing out unabated fossil fuels and to rapidly reducing their use so
as to achieve net-zero CO2 in energy systems by or around mid-century;

Option 4: no text

Of course, each option raises their own questions. What is the best available science? For example, a 2022 study in Nature calculated that if all of the parties kept all of their current promises to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, global average temperatures would peak below the 2-degrees-Celsius threshold agreed to in the Paris Climate Change Agreement. If this result holds, that would mean the "climate crisis" being relentlessly flogged by activists and U.N. bureaucrats at COP28 would fade back into the still significant, but not potentially catastrophic, problem of climate change.

The second option seeks to bind the signatories to the already lost cause of trying to meet the Paris Agreement's aspirational goal of keeping future warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Why is it a lost cause? Because in order to achieve that temperature objective, the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions 43 percent by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, according to U.N. calculations. Keep in mind that the only year since 1990 that global greenhouse emissions fell significantly is the pandemic year 2020 when they dropped by 4.6 percent.

What about phasing out unabated fossil fuels? Unabated basically means capturing and sequestering the carbon dioxide emitted through burning coal, oil, and natural gas by burying it underground or planting trees to absorb it. Happily, a study published in November found that trees and other plants will likely absorb 20 percent more of the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels than previously expected.

Of course, there remains the redundant Option 4: No text. In other words, COP28 negotiators may decide to remain silent on the issue of phasing out fossil fuels.