The euphoric moment the world called time on fossil fuels at Cop28 – before reality set in

For a brief second, the room seemed stunned – and then delegates rose to their feet, clapping and hugging, writes Louise Boyle from the groundbreaking summit in Dubai. But the story doesn’t end there

Cop28 ended with an apparently historic announcement, but is it simply words without substance? (AP)

A strange calm had descended over Expo City as the sun came up on Wednesday, after two weeks of Cop28 which saw tens of thousands – world leaders, tech billionaires, protesters – descend on the sprawling venue.

Now, the summit was being haunted by pods of red-eyed, blue-lanyard-wearing zombies in search of coffee as the venue was packed up around them and pleas for a final deal were audible.

The final days of Cops are always fraught and exhausting, but these felt particularly so.

On Monday, a draft of the summit’s final agreement – which signposts where the world is heading in tackling the climate crisis – had provoked widespread anger and heartwrenching responses over its weak language and deletion of language calling for the “phase out” or “phase down” of fossil fuels, the root of the problem.

“We did not come here to sign our death warrant. We came here to fight for 1.5C and for the only way to achieve that: a fossil fuel phase-out … we will not go silently to our watery graves,” said John M Silk, the Marshall Islands’ minister of natural resources and commerce.

Throughout Tuesday, the summit’s official last day, there were few updates from countries’ delegations on which way the wind was blowing.

Then, soon after 7am on Wednesday, came the latest draft of the “Global Stocktake Agreement” – named for an aspect of the Paris Agreement taking place for the first time this year, where countries take an inventory of their collective progress in cutting emissions to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C this century, and so avoid irreversible tipping points.

A plenary was announced for 9.30am and by the time it finally started at 11am, the room was packed with national ministers, representatives from youth groups and indigenous communities, and journalists.

There was a lot of milling around as delegates waited for UAE and UN officials to take the stage. Dan Jørgensen, the Danish climate minister, who chairs the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, was seen chatting with Wopke Hoekstra, the new European Commissioner for Climate Action, and Spain’s environment minister Teresa Ribera.

UK climate minister Graham Stuart was working the room, looking remarkably sprightly for a man who just made a swift 7,000-mile round trip to London on Tuesday to back prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill. As hush descended, US climate envoy John Kerry was among the last to take his seat.

And then in what felt like a flash it happened: the gavel came down and the world had decided, in the words of UN climate secretary Simon Stiell, that it was the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era.

For a brief second, the room seemed stunned, and then delegates were on their feet, clapping and hugging. The Saudi delegation, one of the main opponents to language which called for ridding the world of fossil fuels, remained in their seats.

But after a brief moment of elation, reality set in. While it is historic that fossil fuels made it into a Cop agreement – for the first time in its 28-year history – there were then the words of Anne Rasmussen, from Samoa.

As delegates from other small countries including the Marshall Islands and other small Pacific island nations filtered into the room she said they were “confused about what just happened” and that they were not in the room when the text was adopted.

“This process has failed us,” she said, describing the document as a “litany of loopholes”.

The remarks were met with cheering and a longer standing ovation than the original fossil fuel announcement.