Simon Stiell says’ ‘we need highest ambition, not point scoring or lowest common denominator politics’
Countries negotiating at Cop28 must not fall into the trap of point scoring and “lowest common denominator politics”, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, has said.
Stiell, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the structure under the auspices of which the climate summit is held, spoke at a press conference in Dubai as Cop28 reached its midpoint. He said:
All governments must give their negotiators clear marching orders. We need highest ambition, not point scoring or lowest common denominator politics.
We have a starting text on the table … but it’s a grab bag of wishlists and heavy on posturing. The key now is to sort the wheat from the chaff.
For all intents and purposes, moving towards the phase-out of fossil fuel combustion is necessary to keep the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement within reach.
Scenarios consistent with this goal require a complete phase-out of coal by 2050 and rapid phase-down of oil and gas (halved every decade). After 2050 the world needs to rapidly move into net negative emissions, particularly after a number of decades of 1.5C overshoot.
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