Nations and environmental groups slam proposals at UN climate talks, calling them too weak

Sev­er­al na­tions and en­vi­ron­men­tal groups on Fri­day slammed pro­pos­als in the fi­nal stages of this year’s U.N. cli­mate talks for fail­ing to ex­plic­it­ly men­tion the cause of glob­al warm­ing — the burn­ing of fu­els such as oil, gas and coal — with one ne­go­tia­tor warn­ing the talks are on “the verge of col­lapse.”

Juan Car­los Mon­ter­rey Gomez, a top ne­go­tia­tor for Pana­ma, said the decades-long Unit­ed Na­tions process risks “be­com­ing a clown show” for the omis­sion. His na­tion was among 36 to ob­ject to a pro­pos­al from con­fer­ence pres­i­dent An­dré Cor­rêa do La­go of host Brazil be­cause it doesn’t pro­vide an ex­plic­it guide map for the world to tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els, nor strength­en­ing cli­mate-fight­ing plans sub­mit­ted ear­li­er this year.

Do La­go coun­tered by telling ne­go­tia­tors he thought they were “very close” to do­ing what they set out to do when they start­ed meet­ing a week ago.

The Brazil­ian pro­pos­als came on what was sup­posed to be the last day of the talks, and on the heels of a fire on Thurs­day that briefly spread through pavil­ions of the con­fer­ence known as COP30 on the edge of the Ama­zon. No one was se­ri­ous­ly hurt but the fire meant a large­ly lost day and in­creased the like­li­hood the talks would sprawl in­to the week­end, as they fre­quent­ly do.

The Eu­ro­pean Union said flat­ly that it wouldn’t ac­cept the text. EU cli­mate com­mis­sion­er Wop­ke Hoek­stra re­mind­ed ne­go­tia­tors that coun­tries had gath­ered at the edge of the Ama­zon to bring down emis­sions and tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els.

“Look at the text. Look at it. None of it is in there. No sci­ence. No glob­al stock­take. No tran­si­tion­ing away. But in­stead, weak­ness,” Hoek­stra said in a closed-door meet­ing of ne­go­tia­tors, ac­cord­ing to a tran­script pro­vid­ed by the EU. “Un­der no cir­cum­stances are we go­ing to ac­cept this. And noth­ing that is even re­mote­ly close, and I say it with pain in my heart, noth­ing that is re­mote­ly close to what is now on the ta­ble.”

“Af­ter 10 years, this process is still fail­ing,” Maina Vaka­fua Talia, min­is­ter of en­vi­ron­ment for the small Pa­cif­ic is­land na­tion of Tu­valu, said in a speech ear­li­er in the day. “The Pa­cif­ic came to COP30 de­mand­ing a sur­vival road map away from fos­sil fu­els. Yet the cur­rent draft texts that came out (do) not even name the main threat for our very sur­vival and ex­is­tence.”

A key text among host Brazil’s pro­pos­als deals with four dif­fi­cult is­sues. They in­clude fi­nan­cial aid for vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries hit hard­est by cli­mate change and get­ting coun­tries to tough­en up their na­tion­al plans to re­duce Earth-warm­ing emis­sions.

Then there’s the dis­pute over cre­at­ing a de­tailed road map for the world to phase out the fos­sil fu­els that are large­ly dri­ving Earth’s in­creas­ing ex­treme weath­er. Any such plan would ex­pand on a sin­gle sen­tence — to “tran­si­tion away” from fos­sil fu­els — agreed up­on two years ago at the cli­mate talks in Dubai. But no timetable or process was spelled out and pow­er­ful oil-pro­duc­ing na­tions like Sau­di Ara­bia and Rus­sia op­pose it.

More than 80 na­tions have called for stronger di­rec­tion and Brazil Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va al­so pushed for it ear­li­er this month.

For­mer U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore urged na­tions to stand firm in op­po­si­tion and hailed Lu­la’s in­volve­ment.

“Sau­di Ara­bia and Don­ald Trump and Rus­sia un­der Vladimir Putin have bul­lied coun­tries to sup­port an ab­surd pro­pos­al,” Gore said in an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. He said the lat­est doc­u­ment “even deletes the pro­pos­al to phase out the ridicu­lous and self-de­struc­tive sub­si­dies for fos­sil fu­els. This is an OPEC text,” he said, for the or­ga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

Tack­ling fos­sil fu­els

On phas­ing out fos­sil fu­els, the pro­pos­al “ac­knowl­edges that the glob­al tran­si­tion to­wards low green­house gas emis­sions and cli­mate-re­silient de­vel­op­ment is ir­re­versible and the trend of the fu­ture.”

The text “al­so ac­knowl­edges that the Paris Agree­ment is work­ing and re­solves to go fur­ther and faster,” re­fer­ring to the 2015 cli­mate talks that es­tab­lished the goal to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 de­grees Fahren­heit), com­pared to the mid-1800s. A key is­sue is that the 119 na­tion­al emis­sions curb­ing plans sub­mit­ted this year don’t come close to lim­it­ing warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees.

Though the text didn’t ad­dress a fos­sil fu­el tran­si­tion road map, it could even­tu­al­ly end in a vague­ly word­ed sec­tion about a plan for the next cou­ple years in a sep­a­rate road map.

The 36 na­tions who thought the text didn’t go far enough in­clud­ed wealthy ones such as the Unit­ed King­dom, France and Ger­many along with small­er cli­mate vul­ner­a­ble is­lands Palau, Mar­shall Is­lands and Van­u­atu. They said the pro­pos­al doesn’t meet “the min­i­mum con­di­tions re­quired for a cred­i­ble COP out­come.”

Colom­bian En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Irene Vélez Tor­res said the pres­i­den­cy’s pro­pos­al is un­ac­cept­able to “those of us who are com­mit­ted to life on this plan­et, to cli­mate jus­tice.”

Get­ting every­one in one room

Agree­ments at these talks are of­fi­cial­ly reached when no na­tion ob­jects and typ­i­cal­ly re­quire many rounds of ne­go­ti­a­tions. In prac­tice, the pro­ceed­ings can end with agree­ments adopt­ed and the pres­i­den­cy ad­journ­ing the meet­ing af­ter not­ing any ob­jec­tions.

In­stead of the usu­al small group meet­ings, the Brazil­ian pres­i­den­cy con­vened a meet­ing of na­tions’ top of­fi­cials be­hind closed doors for much of Fri­day. It’s de­signed to lessen any na­tion feel­ing left out of back­room deals, but it doesn’t let the pub­lic see coun­tries’ ob­jec­tions.

“Far from a promised ‘COP of Truth’ this sum­mit has be­come a mas­ter class in ex­clu­sion,” vet­er­an cli­mate ac­tivist Har­jeet Singh said.

But an­oth­er long­time COP ob­serv­er, Alden Mey­er of the Eu­ro­pean think tank E3G, said get­ting min­is­ters in the same room was a nec­es­sary step.

BELEM, Brazil (AP)