Cop 28: global heating could hit 3C, warn politicians, as climate summit continues
Yesterday The former French prime minister and Cop21 president, Laurent Fabius, said we are off track for 1.5 degrees of warming, as agreed in the Paris agreement, and that he thinks we will hit between 2.8 and 3 if we don’t act now. Nina Lakhani revealed Cop28 organisers granted attendance to at least 475 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage, unproven technologies that climate scientists say will not curtail global heating. Norway’s minister of foreign affairs, Espen Barth Eide, was confronted by activists protesting against the new Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea. The oil and gas licence has been signed off by the UK government – which has been highly controversial– but the facility will be operated by Norway’s Equinor. They asked him if he would stop Rosebank because of the vast emissions it would cause. He said it was not up to him, adding: “These decisions are up to the UK government.” Sultan Al Jaber, Cop28 president, seemed chipper about the progress made at the summit. He told journalists “We can all agree Cop28 has been different, and I am sure we will agree that Cop28 has already made history.” Stick with us for all the updates.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate diplomacy: COP 28
The 28th Conference of the Parties on climate change is planned for Nov. 30 through Dec. 12, 2023, in Dubai.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.