According to US Vice President Al Gore, some nations are trying to push out of the landmark agreement, made at the UN climate summit COP28, of transitioning away from fossil fuels.
197 countries agreed to transition from fossil fossils at the UN climate talks this decade and try eliminating them by mid-century. However, Al Gore, in an interview with Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that some countries are now stating that the move was optional.
“Some of those who signed on to that pledge are now trying to claim it was optional and trying to walk it back a little bit,” said Gore, who didn’t name specific countries. “There are so many loopholes and so many tricky phrases.”
While the move of transition was considered a major achievement in climate history, the language of the agreement was open to interpretation.
During a forum in Riyadh on January 10, Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman of Saudi Arabia highlighted that the COP28 decision’s initial statement regarding the shift from fossil fuels simply “urges” countries to “contribute.”
This also applies to the decision made to triple global renewable power capacity by 2030.
“All of that language enabled everybody to believe that all of these eight items are choices,” he said.
“What we have achieved are choices that people can pick based on their nationally determined circumstances and, of course, pathways and approaches of their own choice.”
“It took 28 years of COPs before we could even use the phrase ‘fossil fuel’,” Gore said. “The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis and yet it’s taken this long to overcome this resistance and even naming that problem.”
