COP 28 Results: Accomplishments, Failures and Controversies

COP 28 was a UN conference on climate change that wrapped up this week. Find out why many observers believe the results don’t go far enough and that the parties’ commitments are too vague to seriously address the climate crisis.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on the 28th Conference of the Parties on to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 28). It’s the annual conference to review progress and plan next steps on the climate crisis.

The conference hadn’t started when I shared those thoughts on what to expect. I expressed a common concern that these conferences of the parties often end up being “all talk and no action.”

The COP28 gathering of 85,000 people in Dubai is over now, so I can talk about some results. There were accomplishments, failures and controversies, and I’ll address the main ones in this post.

Agreement to “Transition Away From Fossil Fuels”

Let’s start with what the parties achieved. Probably the most noteworthy result was that the 197 countries taking part reached a unanimous consensus in their agreement, called the…