 The 28th Conference of Parties, a COP28, is concluded in the United Arab Emirates and there was a lot of discussion specifically on words, words and phrases like phase-outs, transition, mitigation, once again, capturing a lot of the media attention, an incredible amount of discussion taking place. As the conference concluded, there were all kinds of views, many countries expressing happiness over the fact that there was some commitment on transitioning from fossil fuels. Many others, many critical voices from across the world, especially the Global South saying that what has been achieved at this conference is definitely not enough and, you know, we are still staring at disaster. To discuss some of these issues, we have with us D. Raghurathan at the Delhi Science Forum. Raghur, thank you so much for talking to us and let's get straight into the most, you know, the most discussed bit about this conference, the most interesting period, which is that the conference text talks about a transition from fossil fuels. Now, many countries had talked about the need for phasing out or phasing down. Countries like Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, were strongly opposing that. So, can you maybe explain this debate and what this transition really means? In the first place, viewers should know that, funnily enough, ever since the discussions on climate began way back in 92, we all know that the climate change is caused by accumulated greenhouse gases, the most prominent of which is carbon dioxide. And we also know that roughly about 90% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been put there because of burning fossil fuels. So, while we have been discussing the problem of global warming for now close to three decades, there has never been a specific mention of fossil fuels in the COP debates. You've talked about emissions in general. Even though all the measures being taken by people to reduce emissions, a large majority of them are to do with fossil fuels. You're shifting from oil-based power or gas-based power or coal-based power to renewables. That means you're doing away with fossil fuels. You're moving away from petrol-burning vehicles to electric vehicles. Again, you're moving away from fossil fuels. So, this is an obvious fact. But funnily enough, it has never been operationalized or recognized formally in the COP discussions. So, this time the issue of fossil fuels came centre stage. There was some discussion towards that at COP26 in Glasgow, where there was a mention specifically in the declaration to move away from coal-based power. And that's where India had strong objections. The conference had to be postponed, the closure had to be postponed by a day, because India did not agree with that phraseology. And finally, accepted a compromise formulation saying, we will face down coal-based power rather than phase out. Because India thought phase out would mean no more coal. And India, which gets majority of its electricity from coal, because that's the resource we have, objected to it saying, then what are we going to do? This time, the two major changes are that the COP declaration calls for a transition away from fossil fuels. All fossil fuels. So, it doesn't differentiate this time between coal and oil. It says transition away from fossil fuels. But then if you look at the final print, there is a differentiation made. I'll come to that. The point you made about Saudi Arabia and the oil producing states is that they wanted no mention of fossil fuels as such, but wanted to speak only about emissions coming from fossil fuels. Which would give an out and escape clause, that if you can manage to somehow make usable petrol or usable natural gas by trapping the carbon dioxide, not releasing emissions, then you can go on using fossil fuels. So that was the reason why the so-called petrol states were getting agitated about that. And they tried very hard to lobby for excluding fossil fuels. But then the declaration goes on to talk about different aspects of fossil fuels. And there provides for a large number of loopholes, which is what the oil producing states and oil producing companies wanted. So there is a provision for allowing the continued use of transitional fuels, which for the Europeans and the Americans is called for natural gas, which is a fossil fuel, of course. Then there is talk about low carbon hydrogen, which is called for hydrogen made from gas sources. You trap the carbon dioxide, but use the carbon dioxide to drive the production of hydrogen. So there still will be some release of carbon dioxide, but not as much as earlier. Then there is so-called low carbon oil with the UAE, for example, and the president represents the ADNOP, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. They claim that the oil produced from Abu Dhabi has the lowest carbon dioxide content of any oil produced anywhere. So all these kinds of niceties are being introduced in order to give an alibi for the continued use of fossil fuels under the pretense that we will reduce the carbon coming out from that. And there is a special clause under which carbon capture, utilization and storage, CCUS is mentioned. And the problem again is there is no definition in any of these technologies, blue hydrogen, low carbon oil, etc., to say how much carbon dioxide is being trapped. Is it 80%? Is it 90%? Is it 20%? There is no definition. So tomorrow the oil companies can come back and say, yes, we are doing carbon capture, but we are capturing only 20%, 80% is still going out. So unless you have defined what these meant, there is no point. And apart from which carbon capture and storage even today has not been proven commercially anywhere in the world. There is no viable demonstration of a technology to shown to be commercially viable. And as I said, one doesn't know how much carbon dioxide, etc., has been trapped. So my reading of the entire transition thing story is there is some good in the sense that at least a transition away from fossil fuels has been mentioned. But there are too many loopholes given, which will allow for escape of countries and oil producing nations. Oil producing nations claim, why are you only looking at us? We are only producing the oil, the bulk of the utilization, the burning of the oil is being done by those who drive cars in other parts of the world and so on. Blame them, don't blame us. So they are saying this is not a supply problem, this is a demand problem. You look at the demand and that is one. And the irony of course of all this is that the US, Europe are all continually even today engaged in fresh exploration of natural gas deposits. The UK is continuing to issue licenses for natural gas exploration in the North Sea and has said that every year, new licenses will be opened. They have so far issued 170 licenses for exploration of natural gas in the North Sea. And they claim, and this is the unimaginable part, they claim that all the natural gas that they are going to find is a step forward in decarbonization of the economy and their argument, the reverse of the Saudi argument is that this oil extracted from the North Sea, the production will be counted in our count of emissions. But the more we import, then it will reduce and we will import. We are producing this, but we will sell this abroad and then we will import from elsewhere. So there are all kinds of twisted logic being given to justify the continued use of petroleum and natural gas. And we will have to see going down the road how much of this transition actually occurs. But that I think is a lesser problem. We will continue to face that because let's face it, no economy in the world except very small ones are able to really transition away from fossil fuels at this point with the technologies at hand. Maybe after 2030, 2035 or 2040, you will be seriously able to see a transitioning away, but those will have to await I think future dates. But the employment of the huge lobbying potential this time, there were lots of noises made behind this curtain in front. European Union said very bad, this is not good enough. We should have mentioned of moving away from fossil fuels. The US also said that, but behind the scenes they were pushing for all these exceptions, which would give them loopholes to do. Incidentally, a small point with some commentators and journalists have noted is that the presence of oil companies, fossil fuel companies at the cops has been steadily increasing. And last time at Sharmal shape, which is in Egypt, not really a petrol state, but still a state which relies considerably on oil extraction. There were 600 delegates from oil companies. And this year at Dubai, they were 2000 delegates from oil companies, larger than any single national delegation, the largest of which was from Brazil, which had 400 delegates at the cop and the oil companies at 2000 delegates. And many of them are also have been taken as part of the official government delegations of many countries, which means that they are sitting at the negotiating table as oil companies, but as official representatives of their governments. So there is increasing concern that the oil companies are now becoming a central part of the negotiating process itself. This is like, shall we say, cigarette manufacturers being part of discussions of how to deal with cancer or arms manufacturers sitting in a disarmament conference. This is close to that. In this context, I also wanted to ask you a bit about the global stock take. That is one, that is to be one of the highlights of this conference because it would give us a sense of where we are in concretely dealing with climate change. So what has that exercise produced? So as you will recall in our earlier interview that we had here, there had been a process of assessment, the stock taking process. It has been through a series of three technical dialogues which has gathered all the information etc. from elsewhere and they have put out a report as inputs into COP28. The COP28 declaration which is now called the UAE consensus incorporates exactly the same numbers that are given in this stock take which says that if we are to attain 1.5 degrees C, then we should reduce, compared to 2019 levels we should reduce globally emissions by 43% by 2030 and by 60% by 2035. So that target is now fixed into the COP process. The difficulty is over the next year, year and a half all countries are expected to review their NDCs, their emissions commitment which has been given in light of this information and come back to with higher ambition commitments to reduce emissions by middle of 2025. And say in June of 2025, so that by December 2025 COP30 will then give a stamp of approval to all these NDCs that the countries have submitted just like was done at Paris. So these will be the new NDCs. The problem is just like at Paris, there is still the open question. These are all voluntary commitments. So countries will table something India will say we will reduce by so much US will say we'll reduce. Then somebody has to sit down and do the math. Put all these together and figure out, does that make us reach 1.5 or not? Or is there still an emissions gap? I have wanted and hoped that this COP would spell out some methodology by which that happens. Otherwise we will be doing exactly what we did at Paris. People come and give voluntary commitments and then you sit back and say, whoops, this is not equal to 1.5. If you go by these, we will reach 1.8 or 1.9 or 2 Celsius. So I had hoped that this COP would make a move by spelling out some methodology by which we would ensure that the voluntary commitments given put together will take us to 1.5. Maybe the intention is to during the year have negotiations, have discussions at different levels, but it would have been good if there had been a discussion at this COP of some methodology. One methodology which was suggested way back 10, 15 years ago, even before Paris at Copenhagen and so on was that all countries when they sit together, they will table their commitments. You can quickly do the math and see where it is going. Then you will say, no, this is coming to 1.8. So go back, come back the next day with a revised target, but don't leave the conference table until you hit 1.5. So some such methodology, if it had been spelled out, I think that would have given a sense of optimism on this score. Right now we are on a vague thing. You know where your target is, but you have no definition or methodology worked out or how we are going to reach that target. We only just wanted to bring up the question of finances as well. Many countries pointing out of course that all of this big talk is there, but there is really no money on the table. Resources are really what is lacking. Like I think Bolivia has believed to have said that there is all these great declarations whereas the resources. So this COP make any difference that way? None at all. None at all. In fact to me that was the equally if not the bigger disappointment. Big moves on emissions, COPs are not very famous for, but at least we hope that some further advances would be made on finance because the loss and damage fund was finally formally launched at this COP on the first day. But they were gathered pledges from different countries totaling up to only $700 million of which the United States towards richest country has made the great donation of $20 million as its contribution towards the loss and damage fund. So clearly countries are not developed countries are not coming up with the real money. The same thing applies to adaptation. The same thing applies to helping developing countries in the transition away from fossil fuels and towards green energy. They were supposed to be contributions toward that as well. The global stock take had come up with some numbers and estimation of what the scale of funding is required. What is the need for money and you will be astounded at the numbers. It goes between 300 to $450 trillion per year. The original commitment made was that the developed countries would come out come up with $100 billion by the year 2020. They have fallen short of that. Although there is a claim here that they are almost reaching that number. But others who have crunched the numbers differently say that only $20 billion of public funding has been made available. The rest of the money let's say $60 billion $70 billion are all tied to debt. They are loans. So developing countries who are supposed to be helped with transition are given money but on loans which increase the debts that the developing countries have to pay back. So it's a double whammy as far as the developing countries are concerned. You give them money on the one hand and take back a large part of it as debt servicing. And those paradoxes remain. Those contradictions remain in the present structure. There is no categorical distinction made between public financing, debt financing, private financing and development aid. Masquerading as climate finance. The idea of climate finance was it should be distinctively aimed at climate change. But all the developed countries give some development assistance aid to developing countries. They are showing all those also as towards climate financing. So I think this is the old problem which I had been raising with you in our discussions here that you are asking the developed countries to give money. You're giving it different names, mitigation funding, adaptation funding, loss and damage funding. But it's all the same money coming from the same pocket. So there is a limit to what is going to come and the developed countries we all know are not exactly philanthropic giants sitting there waiting to give away free money. They will extract their pound of flesh one way or the other. The only problem is that the money that they are even pledging to give is nowhere near what is required. If it is $300 trillion, that's a thousand times more than what is on the table now. And so that's just a mirage there. And I think that discussions on that front will of course continue, but I don't have too much hope on that. I think a lot of lobbyists, civil society organizations and others, they've spent a great deal of political capital, of time, energy in pushing for greater funding. They have commitments on paper, but I'm afraid that claiming victory is kind of a little difficult to swallow in the sense that one should claim victory if we can see the money on the table. And that has not happened certainly at COP28. And on that unfortunately gloomy note, thank you so much Raghu for speaking to us for explaining really what was at stake at COP28 and what has been achieved for some changes, some improvements in the language need to be mentioned of course. But the larger picture, the larger issue of climate change very much still staring at us in the face.