Attention! Ministers, Heads of Delegation, and diplomats.
ECO has a message for you: Today you have the chance to make history. Or perhaps tomorrow. Or even the day after. If possible ahead of 2030, and well ahead of 2050.
This could be the week that governments make history in the Dubai Expo City. The next days could be an inflection point that helps put the world on track for a future beyond fossil fuels, powered by renewable energy, and with global heating limited to below 1.5ºC. That’s entirely in your hands.
But there is another possibility. We are already seeing the previews of that possibility now, as cyclones rage and wildfires burn. That is the path we risk if you accept the menu full of dead rats, that is last night’s paragraph 39 of the GST draft text, and so fail to agree to a rapid, equitable and funded phase out of fossil fuels. It might serve incumbent interests and billionaires for now, but it won’t serve your country’s people – and it won’t serve you for very long.
ECO would like to remind Ministers that the science is clear: the objectives of the Paris Agreement can only be achieved through a complete phase out of oil, coal and gas production and use. ECO understands that these are complicated negotiations and folks are getting tired so let us make it simple: NO PHASE OUT = NO 1.5ºC.
It’s that simple. No “inter alia”, no “could include”, no “amongst all other things”, no boosting false solutions, no propping up gas. That would be betraying present and future generations.
Right now, there is unprecedented momentum to confront the fossil elephant in the room. You have never been closer to this historic agreement to phase out all fossil fuels. That’s why over 2,400 oil, gas, and coal lobbyists are here at the COP. That is why OPEC is sending letters. They are here because they are scared that you might take the right decision this week. Will you serve their interests, or the interests of your country’s, and every country’s, future?
Remember, people will nott only judge you for what you say here, but what you do at home – especially if you are here on behalf of one of the five wealthy nations responsible for over half of predicted oil and gas expansion between now and 2050. The atmosphere doesn’t care about pretty words. What matters is whether carbon stays in the ground, or gets burned into the sky. What’s more, an agreement here won’t stop people living near oil refineries back home, from suffering preventable diseases from the chemical pollution from those smokestacks.
The time is now. End oil. End gas. End coal. Our future is renewable energy.