VISIBLY frustrated United Nations officials urged negotiators at the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai to push harder for an end to fossil fuels today.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres returned to the summit today and said it was “time to go into overdrive, to negotiate in good faith and rise to the challenge.” 

He said negotiators at the summit in particular must focus on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and climate justice.

He said the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — should “phase out all fossil fuels” in order to reach the goal of limiting the rise of global temperatures to 1.5°C. 

That phase-out was, he said, ”a central aspect" for the summit to be considered a success.

“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” he said. “We are out of road and almost out of time.”

Mr Guterres brought back up the concept of a two-track phase-down of fossil fuels, with wealthy nations acting faster and harder and giving more time and money to poorer countries, but climate campaigners are sceptical of the plan.

Veteran Nigerian environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey said that the ultimate goal should be for “fossil fuels to be kept in the ground” as indigenous communities around the world have often borne the cost of oil exploration.

“We can’t keep on running the tap while pretending we’re mopping the floor,” Mr Bassey said. “We have to turn off the taps.”

Sticking points for the global stocktake are on familiar lines. Many countries, including small island states, European countries and Latin American nations, are calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels, responsible for most of Earth’s warming.

But other nations want weaker language that will allow oil, gas and coal to keep burning in some way.

Joseph Sikulu, a Pacific climate campaigner who was protesting outside Mr Guterres’s briefing, said: “We know that on the inside of the negotiations the high-exploiting countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia, Australia, are the ones who are blocking on the phase-out of fossil fuels.

“We need them to step aside ... so that we can get the results that are needed from these negotiations.”