As details of COP26 deal emerge, a push to cut emissions faster and phase out fossil fuels

The provision was part of a broader draft climate deal released early morning, the specifics of which are likely to evolve in the coming days as representatives from nearly 200 countries haggle over every line and phrase of the international agreement.

“It’s fossil fuels that cause climate change,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa. “Explicitly mentioning it gets on the path to addressing it.”

But Adow and others know that in the closed-door talks still underway, even a basic reference to fossil fuels could get scrapped, as countries that still rely on them push back.

“This is not something we have seen before,” Helen Mountford, vice president for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute, said of the push to move away from coal, oil and gas. “The question is whether it will stand.”

Despite welcoming the first official acknowledgment during these talks that nations need to accelerate the clean-energy transition to have any chance of hitting the world’s climate targets, many activists and delegates from vulnerable nations were unimpressed with the overall shape of the emerging deal.

They noted that even the reference to fossil fuels, which includes no fixed timeline, could get watered down. And they said that the rest of the proposal, while still in flux, hardly reflects the grand ambitions, lofty promises and sense of urgency that world leaders proclaimed from podiums here just last week.

“It’s quite clear this is not a plan to solve the climate emergency,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International.

Wednesday’s draft does seek to speed progress toward the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement — limiting the average global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

It notes that current national pledges are insufficient to avert catastrophic warming and urges countries to update their carbon-cutting plans before the end of 2022 — especially those countries that have not adopted more ambitious targets since the Paris agreement was signed.

The proposed pact recognizes that meeting the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius will require “rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions,” including lowering global emissions by 45 percent by 2030.

The outline also calls for developed countries to boost their aid to lower-income nations, including doubling funds to help those countries adapt to worsening climate impacts, and to provide “enhanced and additional support” for addressing the irreversible effects of climate change, known as loss and damage.

But it does not mention a clear financial mechanism for addressing loss and damage, nor does it offer details on what support rich nations would be expected to deliver beyond 2025 — a shortfall that could prove a key sticking point for countries on the front lines of climate change.

“In Glasgow, we should have been talking about increasing climate finance to align with the need — which is trillions of dollars,” said Brian O’Callaghan, leader of the Oxford University Economic Recovery Project, which advocates for a sustainable response to the coronavirus pandemic. But the draft text, he said, offers “only peanuts for developing countries.”

O’Callaghan noted that rich countries have spent trillions on their covid-19 response but have said they can’t afford to meet their commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance.

“Rich countries have created climate change, and they continue to pollute irresponsibly at the cost of human lives,” he added.

One Biden administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there had been progress on ensuring that wealthy countries deliver on the long-standing but unfulfilled promise to deliver $100 billion a year to help developing nations adapt to climate impacts and build greener economies.

But many countries remained concerned not only about the overall amount, but how it would be distributed.

Pakistan, a member of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries, which includes China, said a far great percentage of the money should go to adaptation. “If the money doesn’t come, nothing happens,” said Malik Amin Aslam Khan, special assistant on climate change to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

That tug of war over the money for dealing with climate change was shaping up Wednesday to be one of the central fights remaining as negotiators try to craft a deal all nations could embrace.

“I think you’ll see the vulnerable countries coming out and fighting for their very lives, which is what this is all about,” Morgan said.

Britain’s Alok Sharma, the president of COP26, has maintained that he wants the summit to set the world on a more sustainable path. On Wednesday, he insisted that any final deal must be credible and meaningful.

“We all know what is at stake in these negotiations and the urgency of our task. In very human terms, what we agree in Glasgow will set the future for our children and grandchildren. And I know that we will not want to fail them,” Sharma said. “So I request us all collectively to please roll up our sleeves and get to work.”

But whether that plea for solidarity would work remains unclear.

Complaints came from some corners that the United States and the European Union weren’t doing enough to shape an agreement for more aggressive climate action. There were whispers that nations that have traditionally balked at phasing out fossil fuels, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and others, would do so again. Questions swelled over whether small and economically fragile nations, which often negotiate as a bloc at these talks, would torpedo any deal that doesn’t include more financial aid from the developed world.

Wednesday’s draft represents an opening bid of sorts. Some parts may come out, while some text may be added. But technical details aside — and many of those remain unresolved — the central question that loomed over COP26 as officials ducked back into their nondescript negotiating rooms is whether they can craft an agreement that meets the urgency that scientists and activists in the streets have insisted is necessary and overdue.

Alden Meyer, a veteran climate expert with think tank E3G, said the talks have reached a “fork in the road.”

Leaders can ultimately settle for an unambitious agreement that does not push the major emitters outside their comfort zone and leaves vulnerable nations largely on their own. That path, Meyer said, would give credence to the criticism from young people that these talks have been little more than “blah, blah, blah.” Or nations can set aside their varied political interests and place the world on a stronger track for the years ahead — one marked by concrete commitments rather than comforting rhetoric.

“Is 1.5 degrees alive? Just barely,” Meyer said Wednesday. “We don’t need incremental steps. We need radical, transformational change. We are running out of time to make the shifts we need.”

Dan Zak and Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.