The UN climate talks are a “nightmare” but the “best process we’ve got”, the UK energy secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News as the COP30 summit ran into overtime, with a showdown on fossil fuels looming.
Countries gathered in northern Brazil are still locked in a stand-off over a deal to wean the world off fossil fuels, the main cause of the climate crisis.
Other key sticking points are cash for developing countries to adapt to more extreme weather, like drought in Afghanistan, which they have generally done little to cause.
But despite the divisions, UK energy secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News in Belem: “The process is a nightmare, but it’s the best process we’ve got.”
The annual COP talks are “so hard” because they see more than 190 countries negotiating over the future of their economies, oceans and forests, he said.
But he pointed to achievements from the three decades of talks, including lowering expected global warming by a substantial margin, and the fact that around 80% of global GBP is now covered by a net-zero climate target.
Mr Miliband said: “So it’s painful, it’s painstaking, it makes you tear your hair out, but it does represent progress.
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“This is a global problem; we’ve got to have global cooperation to tackle it.”
The two-week conference in the Amazon city of Belem was due to end at 6pm local time (9pm UK time) on Friday, but, like previous COP summits, looked set to run well into the weekend.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and about 80 countries, including the UK and coal-rich Colombia, are pushing for a plan on how to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
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This is a pledge all countries agreed to two years ago at COP28 – then did very little about since.
But scores of countries – including major oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia – see this push as too prescriptive or a threat to their economies.
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Mr Miliband said the UK was “determined” that COP30 produced a commitment to a so-called “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels.
He said: “There are different ways of [weaning off fossil fuels], but it’s got to happen, in our view.”
A draft version of the deal, which host country Brazil released on Friday morning after talks had been delayed by a fire, had dropped any of the options previously mentioned to tackle oil and gas.
