(Bloomberg) -- Some countries are trying to wiggle out ofย the landmark agreement reached at the COP28 climate summit to transition away from fossil fuels, according to former US Vice President Al Gore.At the United Nations conference in Dubai, 197 nationsย agreed to accelerate the removal ofย fossil fuels from their energy systems this decade and eliminate them byย mid-century. But some are now claiming that part of the pledge is optional, Gore, who is chairman of Generation Investment Management, said in aย interviewย on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
โSome 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,โ said Gore, who didn't name specific countries. โThere are so many loopholes and so many tricky phrases.โย
The pledge was lauded as a turning point for global climate diplomacy because it directly addressed the source of global warming โ fossil fuels that generate planet-warming greenhouse gases when burned. It was a small step forward even asย 2023 was declared as the hottest year on record andย extreme weather events wrecked havoc across the globe.
Butย the language of the deal is still open to interpretation.ย Saudi Arabiaย Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman pointed out at a forum inย Riyadhย on Jan. 10 that the start of the paragraph in the COP28 decision that deals with transitioning away from fossil fuels merely โcalls onโ countries to โcontribute.โ That also applies to key pledges including tripling global renewable power capacity by 2030.ย
โAll of that language enabled everybody to believe that all of these eight items are choices,โ he said.ย โWhat 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.โ
Gore is also advocating forย reform of the diplomatic process underpinning the annual climate summits known as the Conference of Parties, or COP.ย โThe world's getting understandably impatient and frustrated that these conferences are rigged,โ Gore said. โThe deck is stacked in favor of the fossil industry.โ
As withย other processes under the UN umbrella,ย decisions including which country gets to host are reached by consensus. That meansย any nation has a right to veto, a requirement that often ends up with deals reflecting only the minimum of what any one country isย willing to do.
โIt took 28 years of COPs before we could even use the phrase โfossil fuel',โ Gore said. โThe climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis and yet it's taken this long to overcome this resistance and even naming that problem.โ
Questioning of the COP process ramped up last year as the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas producer, became the host country and named Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi state-owned oil company Adnoc, as COP28 president. This year, Azerbaijan will host COP29, with former oil executive Mukhtar Babayev as president.ย
โThe percentage of oil and gas revenue coming in for Azerbaijan, the host of this COP, is even larger than it was in the Emirates,โ Gore said. โIt's not that they're bad people or have bad intentions โย it's that they have a structural conflict of interest.โ
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