What Next After COP28?

If a hallmark of successful diplomacy is that everyone leaves the negotiating room a little unhappy, COP28 was a smashing success. The draft agreement released on Monday, which cut references to phasing out fossil fuels, was met with outrage in many quarters. The summit presidency claimed the move was strategic, a ploy to ruffle feathers and get everyone to more clearly point to their red lines. On Tuesday afternoon, everyone not directly sitting in closed-door negotiations, myself included, was dozing off as conference staff started dismantling the facilities. The ashtray outside the press hall overflowed, rumors about timing and compromises flew thick and fast, and mostly wrong. By 9 p.m., Sultan al-Jaber’s comms team recommended we pack it in.

I expected that the next morning’s draft wouldn’t be the last. But it was — gaveled in so quickly that the small-island states team didn’t even have time to make it into the plenary hall. Al-Jaber almost had to give his big closing speech off the cuff, because a U.N. staffer who was supposed to send him notes hadn’t updated their WhatsApp.

There’s plenty to quibble with in the agreement, as I write about below. But just two years ago, at COP26 in Glasgow, negotiators could barely agree on the need to wind down coal power. Now, all fossil fuels are unambiguously on the chopping block. Previous COP agreements only targeted net zero by “midcentury,” whereas today’s deal specifically points to 2050. But in some ways, COP is the easy part. Now it’s up to governments to put their promises into practice.

—Tim McDonnell 

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