By DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – DECEMBER 11: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (C), President of the COP28 UNFCCC Climate Conference, emerges from negotiations over the wording of the Presidential draft on day eleven of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference. | Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
What would have been a historic deal to tackle a planetary crisis slipped out of reach at the eleventh hour. Even so, climate-vulnerable countries and environmental advocates scored some key wins with clean energy after heated climate negotiations wrapped up in the United Arab Emirates, a top oil- and gas-producing country.
This was the closest yet that countries have gotten to striking a global deal to phase out the use of coal, oil, and gas. But the summit was arguably still a home game for fossil fuel interests who threw their weight around the United Nations climate conference, called the 28th Conference of the Parties or COP28, where tens of thousands of delegates and activists from nearly every nation on Earth have gathered over…