BERLIN: Envoys from some 190 nations are taking more seriously the idea of setting a goal to phase out the pollution from fossil fuels, lending support to the movement against investments in oil and coal companies.
After a week of discussions in Geneva, delegates convened by the United Nations adopted an 86-page draft document with options including the near-elimination of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 or 2100 — or to suck the most destructive fumes out of the atmosphere by 2080.
While the text marks only the starting point of discussions, that fossil-fuel limits have been given such prominence in the talks is an indication that the envoys are looking to ratchet up ambitions for a deal they wish to conclude in December in Paris.
“It’s hard to imagine Saudi Arabia and some of the other oil producers will accept language that explicitly says fossil fuels have to be phased out,” Alden Meyer, who follows the talks for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in Geneva. “It’s also difficult to believe that some of the Europeans and small island states will accept language that doesn’t at least implicitly go in that direction.”
With gases from burning oil, coal and natural gas at record levels, global temperatures are on track to warm by 3.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s the quickest shift in the climate in 10,000 years, which scientists say raises risks of more violent storms and rising seas.
The envoys are working on a deal that would build on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which limited emissions in industrial nations. The goal of that treaty was to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The United Nations and some of the island nations most at threat from climate change want a more specific goal in the Paris deal.
