A new draft document from the United Nations climate summit, COP26 was published on Friday with a weakening of language around the phasing out of fossil fuels to try to reach an agreement between the nearly 200 nations present in Glasgow, according to Reuters.
The new draft included two words on fossil fuels that dilute an earlier draft, which had baldly stated that the world should pledge to stop subsidies for fossil fuels in general and phase them out.
Now the text includes the word „unabated” before coal and the phase-out of „inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuels.
Arab nations, many of which are big producers of oil and gas, had objected to the fossil fuel wording in the earlier draft.
The paragraph now reads: „(COP26) calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies and the adoption of policies for the transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.”
Negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow were locking horns on Friday for what is scheduled to be the final day of bargaining over how to stop global warming from becoming catastrophic.