A new climate agreement has for the first time explicitly called on nations to transition away from fossil fuels, but stopped short of calling for a phase out and angered some smaller oil producer nations for failing to offer sufficient compensation.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer called for urgent action from the UK government to go beyond the compromise deal agreed at this year’s COP climate summit in Dubai.
Denyer said:
“Without sustained government action following this disappointing COP28, the world is heading for a hellish future. We need to press our ambitions with a renewed vigour.
“The fact that UK climate change minister, Graham Stuart, returned to London to vote on the Rwanda Bill just as the hardest part of the negotiations got underway tells the world this Conservative government just doesn’t care.
“This is the price we pay for government chaos at home – being sidelined at the most crucial moment in the COP28 negotiations.
“COP agreed a ‘transition’ away from fossil fuels that falls far short of the fair phase out that is needed. It offers market solutions that will leave behind the poorest countries and bolster the Petro-states.
“Despite this disappointing result, we can still achieve an outcome that avoids the worst of the climate emergency while also creating safer streets, cleaner air, warmer homes, more jobs in renewable energy and support for our farmers to produce more food locally.
“There is a groundswell of calls for action from around the world – at least 127 countries called for or endorsed a decision to phase out fossil fuels at COP28. Now is the time for action.
“We got some limited cash pledges to kick-start the loss and damage fund, more warm words about the 1.5°C target and a desperate compromise on fossil-fuels that protects the interests of oil producers rather than the planet.
“We urged COP28 to achieve three vital things – the changes needed now to keep to the 1.5°C target set eight years ago in Paris; the phasing out of fossil fuels, and generous contributions to the loss and damage fund to support poorer countries through the climate crisis.
“The UK’s £60 million contribution to the loss and damage fund is not new money, and the totals pledged from the richest countries amount to less than 0.2% of the irreversible damage poorer countries are facing from global heating each year.
“Taken together, COP28 has not delivered nearly enough to tackle the climate crisis. That means it is all the more important to make our demand for action now clearer and louder.
“For instance, we must make the UK government face up to the science and cancel new oil and gas licences for the North Sea.
“It must now increase investment in onshore and offshore wind, and other forms of renewable energy, to deliver on pledges made.
“And the government must fund local councils to deliver a nationwide programme of home and business insulation to cut energy use and lower people’s bills.
“If the government here, and other world leaders, would engage seriously, we could be creating a much better and fairer future for people throughout the UK and around the world.
“We can still achieve that future. The best time to act was decades ago. The next best time is right now.”
Deputy leader Zack Polanski points out that the failure at COP28 to offer an end to fossil fuel use demanded more action, not less. Zack said on LBC News: “Every year that a COP is wasted, or we don’t make real progress on that Paris Agreement, that’s another year that is ticking by. There’s an existential threat, both to our planet and ecological collapse. These things don’t have to be negative. It’s actually about having cleaner air, more cohesive communities, investing in people and good, greener jobs. All of those things are ready for the taking. People just need to vote for it.”
Promoted by Jan Davis on behalf of Broadland Green Party, a constituent party of the Green Party of England & Wales PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ