Was COP28 a huge success?

The Energy Gang

Wood Mackenzie

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4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The gang assess the outcome of the climate talks in Dubai.

This year’s COP went to overtime, as countries argued over the wording of the concluding statement. They had to carry on the negotiations all through the night to do it, but finally they emerged with what was described as a “historic” agreement. For the first time, the need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels has been put on the record in a concluding statement from a COP.

In our final show on COP28, the Energy Gang look back on the last two weeks of negotiations and debates, and as the dust starts to clear, they assess what it all means. Ed Crooks was present at the talks in Dubai, as were regular guests Dr Melissa Lott of Columbia University and Amy Harder of Cipher, and together they tackle one key question: can we call the conference a success? Some people have been hailing it as a triumph, others say it’s a disaster. Does the truth perhaps lie somewhere in the middle? Or is it not that simple?

The Global Stocktake of climate action, agreed at COP28, calls for a “just, orderly and equitable” transition, “accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050”. Amy and Melissa explain what that means, and how it could change the world.

Find all of our coverage of COP28 at http://www.woodmac.com/podcasts/the-energy-gang

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Energy Gang with the last of our shows on the COP28
0:06.7	climate talks in Dubai. I'm it Crooks.
0:10.8	And I'm joined today by two old friends who like me have recently returned from the talks and who we spoke to while the negotiations were going on.
0:20.0	Amy Harder is the executive editor of Saipher, which is the publication from Breakthrough Energy. on. And also a
0:33.7	we're joined by Melissa Lott, who's the director of research at Columbia University's
0:34.4	Center on Global Energy Policy and also a professor at Columbia's Climate School.
0:38.4	Hi Melissa, how are you?
0:39.4	Hey, I'm doing well, still don't know what time zone I'm in, but I think we all are feeling that right now.
0:46.3	Yeah, which brings me to what I have to start with now which is thanks for being flexible and an apology.
0:54.0	Very, very naively, I scheduled the recording of this podcast
0:58.0	for yesterday, which is the last day, the cop,
1:01.0	and we're kind of recording on US time so that well it's banned to be over by
1:04.4	then and so we'll have a conclusion we'll be able to discuss it etc. Of course that
1:08.8	turned out not to be the case it is very very often the case that these cop negotiations run past their scheduled end time and that's exactly what happened in Dubai and I think I was looking at when they finally agreed things. We're now talking it's about 7 PM
1:25.8	Dubai time on the day after the talks are meant to close and really just in the last few hours the final statement has been released and so on so as
1:34.3	usual it's that kind of the pressure of the deadline pushing people to agree
1:39.0	something was very necessary to get some kind of statement agreed.
1:43.6	And I guess one of the key things we're going to be talking about is,
1:46.1	in terms of what they actually came out with, is it what people wanted?
1:49.7	Is it something that is really going to be significant in terms of changing the world of energy,
1:54.7	putting us on a different trajectory for the climate. I suppose the most kind of basic and simple way to think
2:01.1	about a cop is success or failure. I've seen a lot of different
	...

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