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For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to tackle climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreed to a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet.
The sweeping agreement, which comes during the hottest year in recorded history, was reached on Wednesday after two weeks of furious debate at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled extreme weather were urging language that called for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels. But that proposal faced intense pushback from major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as fast-growing countries like India and Nigeria.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to tackle climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreed to a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet.
In the end, negotiators struck a compromise: The new deal calls on countries to accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade in a “just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury.
It also calls on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy, like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
While past U.N. climate deals have urged countries to reduce emissions, they have shied away from explicitly mentioning the words “fossil fuels,” even though the burning of oil, gas and coal are the primary cause of global warming.
“This sends a clear signal that the world is moving decisively to phaseout fossil fuels, turbocharge renewable energy and efficiency, and tackle forest loss and degradation,” said Jake Schmidt, the senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
The deal represents a diplomatic victory for the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich nation that hosted these talks at a sprawling expo center in Dubai under hazy skies just 11 miles away from the largest natural gas power plant in the world.
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