G20 environment meeting ends without agreement on climate crisis
G20 nations failed to agree on peaking global emissions by 2025 and other crucial issues to address the global climate crisis at their meeting in India on Friday, France's representative said. No breakthrough was possible on several key points ahead of this year's COP28 climate talks, with negotiations also failing to reach a consensus on drastically scaling up renewable energy use. «I am very disappointed,» France's ecological transition minister Christophe Bechu told AFP after the meeting.
«We are not able to reach an agreement of increasing drastically renewable energies, we are not able to reach an agreement on phasing out or down fossil fuels, especially coal,» he said. «Records of temperatures, catastrophes, giant fires, and we are not able to reach an agreement on the peaking (of) emissions by 2025.» The discussions with China, Saudi Arabia, and on climate issues with Russia had been «complicated», he added. The Chennai meeting comes days after energy ministers from the bloc — which represents more than 80 percent of global GDP and CO2 emissions — failed to agree on a roadmap to cut fossil fuels from the global energy mix.
That was seen as a blow to mitigation efforts even as climate experts blame record global temperatures for triggering floods, storms and heatwaves. Some major oil producers — such as Russia and Saudi Arabia — were blamed for the lack of progress. All present at Friday's conference understood «the severity of the crisis» facing the world, Adnan Amin, chief executive of this year's COP28 climate talks, told AFP.
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