UK energy secretary says UN climate talks must find way to keep proposals alive despite significant resistance
Supporters of a global phaseout of fossil fuels must find “creative” ways to keep the proposal alive, including making it voluntary rather than binding, the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has said in the closing stages of the UN climate talks.
As the Cop30 summit in Brazil carried on past the Friday night deadline, the prospect of countries agreeing on the need for a roadmap to a global “transition away from fossil fuels” looked increasingly dim. A first draft of the potential outcome text from the summit had contained the formulation, but in the updated draft text produced on Friday by the Brazilian presidency it had been excised.
Miliband told the Guardian that “one way or another” there would be an outcome from the two-week summit that contained the pledge, but that it might be in an altered form, or could be a voluntary initiative rather than a binding commitment.
“We are fighting for the roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels, and we’ve determined that one way or another we won’t lose the momentum [towards that outcome] that we’ve built at this Cop,” he said. “There’s a big coalition that wants this, of developing and developed countries.”
