Food Could Be the Trickiest Climate Problem

Over two weeks of negotiations, delegates at the Dubai Conference of Parties squabbled over the language that they would include in their final declaration. Would the countries at the COP pledge to “phase out” fossil fuels, or would they merely promise to “reduce” them? In the end, the two sides agreed on a compromise: the world would <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/countries-push-cop28-deal-fossil-fuels-talks-spill-into-overtime-2023-12-12/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">begin</a> “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner.” The debate over getting fossil fuels out of energy production, as fractious and frustrating as it is, is relatively straightforward. Everybody understands that burning fossil fuels is a direct contributor to climate change. Everybody knows that we need to burn much less coal, oil, and gas (the debate in Dubai, after all, was about how quickly and how completely to reduce our fossil fuel usage). Everybody understands how we might be able to replace fossil fuels, and most people agree that many of these replacements are better than our traditional fossil-fuel technologies (electric cars, for example, are faster, safer, and more reliable than gas-powered ones, and solar power plants don’t cause deadly particulate pollution). <a href="https://medium.com/the-new-climate/food-could-be-the-trickiest-climate-problem-6f4a0546a844">Read More</a>