Glasgow summit targets oil and coal more timidly in latest draft

Glasgow already plays in injury time. The final verdict of the Climate Summit (COP26) was due to arrive this Friday afternoon but, after a plenary session full of tension and reproaches, the disagreement has reopened on some of the most critical points of the debate. This morning, after the umpteenth night of negotiations that drag on until dawn, the presidency of the Summit has published a new draft of the agreements. The text maintains an express request for aspeed up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies and demands, once again, that the countries present next year, during the Egypt Summit, more ambitious plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the short and long term.

The message about the end of fossil fuels, already appearing in previous drafts, has gone through a metamorphosis overnight. The latest text published this morning, in fact, speaks of the end of fossil fuels within a much more genetic appeal on the need to accelerate the ecological transition towards low-emission energy sources through, for example, the deployment of a series of political and technological tools. Of course, the end of coal and oil, gas and coal subsidies are explicitly cited (something that, according to the most skeptical, was not going to survive the night). An unpublished mention is also added to the need to support a just transition.