COP28 is the world’s climate lifeline

COP28, the world’s largest climate conference ever held, gets under way in Dubai on Nov 30. The mission of the two-week United Nations talks: to reach a global deal that pulls the world back from the brink of climate disaster. The talks involving nearly 200 nations and an estimated 70,000 people are occurring during what is expected to be the hottest year on record, one marked by extreme heatwaves, wildfires, storms and catastrophic floods and evidence of accelerating melting of glaciers and ice caps. There is urgency in the air in Dubai. The world needs to accelerate the phasing out of fossil fuels and dramatically scale up renewable energy and electrification of transport. Crucially, trillions of dollars in financing is needed for poorer nations to pay for clean energy, adapt to worsening climate impacts and fund the transition of millions of workers to greener industries. None of these is a new idea. It has been clear for decades what needs to be done.

And this is the major problem with UN climate talks: They have struggled to deliver agreements that match the increasing pace of climate change. The annual talks of 2023, called the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, are the 28th instalment. Getting agreement between 200 nations is hard and tackling climate change means huge economic transformations for energy, manufacturing, transport and many other industries. That transformation is under way, but not at the pace that is needed.