3 wins and 3 losses at the biggest climate conference ever

The largest international climate change conference in history closed Wednesday in the United Arab Emirates in the waning days of the hottest year on record with yet another limp agreement between countries to do more to address global warming as the problem gets worse. The accord did, for the first time, explicitly call for countries to use less fossil fuel, but it did not specify by when or how much.

“It is a balanced plan that tackles emissions, bridges the gap on adaptation, reimagines global finance, and delivers on loss and damage,” said Sultan al-Jaber, the president of COP28, this year’s summit, in his closing remarks. United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the accord the “beginning of the end” for fossil fuels, adding that the agreement was a “climate action lifeline, not a finish line.”

The two-week COP28 meeting followed what’s become a well-worn pattern in international climate negotiations: more promises than ever to address climate change, but still not enough to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit global warming this century to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to the average temperatures before the Industrial Revolution. On the contrary, humanity is likely to increase emissions of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere in the coming years.

But this year’s summit did stand apart from the past 27 conventions for its scale. It was the largest climate conference ever, with nearly 80,000 people registered to attend, along with almost 4,000 journalists. All this attention has turned what was once a dry bureaucratic meeting into a festival with world leaders, billionaires, and celebrities stopping by.