The new deal is not legally binding and can’t, on its own, force any country to act. Yet many of the politicians, environmentalists and business leaders gathered in Dubai hoped it would send a message to investors and policymakers that the shift away from fossil fuels was unstoppable. Over the next two years, each nation is supposed to submit a detailed, formal plan for how it intends to curb greenhouse gas emissions through 2035. Wednesday’s agreement is meant to guide those plans.
No, the COP process has been operating by “consensus” which the presidents of it have almost always as requiring unanimous agreement on every word. This has allowed petrostates to block anything they didn’t like. They’ve gone so far as to consistently block the words “fossil fuels” from the summaries of the scientific reports from the IPCC.
This agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough, even on a voluntary basis as a result; it does things like mention fossil methane gas as a “transition fuel” which might have been reasonable 30 years ago, but isn’t something we can afford now.