First ever talks to ditch fossil fuels as UN deadlock deepens
21 hours ago
Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent
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A large group of countries including some major oil producers are meeting on Friday to plan something UN climate summits have failed to agree on – a complete move away from fossil fuels.
Around 60 nations are gathering in Santa Marta, Colombia as the world warms rapidly, mainly from the use of coal, oil and gas.
Countries attending account for roughly a fifth of global fossil fuel supply – including Colombia, Australia and Nigeria – but major powers including the US, China and India are not part of the talks.
Progress at the annual UN COP climate meetings has slowed as decisions depend on the consent of all, giving large fossil producers an effective veto.
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At COP30, held in Brazil last November, efforts to agree a roadmap away from fossil fuels failed as major oil producing nations wouldn’t agree to the plan.
Delegates say this new meeting in Colombia is not to replace the COP, but to complement it.
This frustration with COPs is also being sharpened by the science, which suggests the chance to keep warming to safer levels – and avoid the most damaging impacts – is slipping away.
Scientists say once warming passes 1.5C, dangerous impacts become more likely and harder to reverse.
“We are inevitably going to crash through the 1.5C limit within the next three to five years,” Prof Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told BBC News.
“Breaking through 1.5C means we enter a far more dangerous world – with more frequent and intense droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves – and we are already approaching critical tipping points in major Earth systems.”
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At the same time, events beyond the climate sphere are beginning to reshape the debate of fossil energy.
While the US, the world’s largest economy has pushed back strongly in favour of coal, oil and gas, under President Trump, many other countries are now sitting on the fence in terms of the scale and speed of their move away from fossil energy
Participants at the Santa Marta meeting believe the real purpose of the meeting is to show those who are hesitating about the transition that there is a critical mass moving in favour of renewables.
“We are committed to working with other countries to support those wishing to drive forward their transitions to clean and secure energy,” said UK Climate Envoy Rachel Kyte who is attending the gathering.
“We have the experience of our transition to share and the recent experience of driving to energy security with our clean power mission.”
Conflict in the Middle East has pushed up oil prices in recent weeks, highlighting the risks of dependence on fossil fuels and bringing questions of energy security back into focus.
“This is exactly why this conference matters now,” said former Irish President Mary Robinson, who is attending the meeting as a founding member of The Elders group of former world leaders.
“The urgency is multiplied. What’s happening has worsened the fossil fuel crisis we’re already in.”
The dramatic events in the Straits of Hormuz and elsewhere are impacting the choices people are making about energy consumption.
“I’ve just stepped off an advisory board meeting with Mercedes-Benz, and they expressed what’s happening as a success – a sharp rise in demand for electric vehicles in Europe,” Prof Rockström said.
“People are recognising they want energy independence – they don’t want to be in the hands of a volatile oil and gas market.”
The emergence of this new “coalition of the willing” raises questions about whether it represents a shift away from the COP process altogether.
“Ultimately you don’t need all countries to drive global progress. You need a starting point,” said Katerine Petersen from think tank E3G, who is attending the meeting.
“Then you need a coalition that can expand over time and show how it can and will be useful. And I think that’s what we’re expecting to see from Santa Marta.”
The organisers stress that this meeting is not an alternative to COP, but see it as playing a key role in reviving that process.
Some of the leaders of the Brazilian COP will be in attendance in Santa Marta and the main conclusions agreed there will become part of Brazil’s roadmap away from fossil fuels that the country has said it will publish before COP31 in Turkey in November.
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