Will COP28 fail after dropping fossil fuel pledge?

The activists will probably then brand COP28 a failure. But there is a broader, more prosaic definition of COP success. On this view, success doesn’t necessarily lie so much in exactly what is agreed – although that is important – but in the fact that agreement takes place at all.

The critical metric is that the agreement, whatever it is, in some way represents – or can be plausibly construed to represent – some kind of forward momentum or progress.

It sounds like a low bar. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen raised it slightly on Tuesday (AEDT), when he said the COP28 deal has to be a step change rather than just a step forward. Either way, the political ramifications of failure on this metric, at home as well as globally, could be significant.

If COP28 does not take a clear step forward of some sort, perceptions could take hold that the world is losing the unity and the will to tackle climate change. This would sap the legitimacy and credibility of government decarbonisation efforts at national level, including in Australia.

Climate policies can impose costs on households or business, or draw on taxpayers’ money. If the COP process seems broken, critics could point to that and ask: why should Australians bear this burden when the world has turned away from the task? The government’s political and policy space for domestic climate action could shrink.

So the Albanese government’s ability to sell and deliver its climate change policies arguably rests partly on the endorsement of the international community that comes via the COP.

Conversely, it is almost in the interests of countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia to see the COP process founder. COP has significant power to build and reinforce global climate norms, putting inescapable pressure even on the dissenting countries.

Saudis straining at the leash

The Saudis are straining at the leash, but they continue to turn up – in effect buying into the process, and to the idea that action is needed. This shows how powerful the COP’s norm-building process has been. It created the concepts of net-zero and the 1.5 degree safety limit in 2015 in Paris, and these are now articles of faith.

The prosaic measure of success is a more realistic one to aim for because the conference makes decisions by consensus. That means progress is more likely to be iterative, a ratchet, than revolutionary, a sledgehammer.

So just because the conference won’t succeed on the terms set by green groups and the liberal media, that doesn’t equate to failure.

Even if COP28 does not deliver a pledge to phase out fossil fuels, that doesn’t mean the countries that have advocated for it, including Australia, will go home empty-handed.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will be able to tout the Dubai summit as “the renewables COP”, when countries swung behind a plan to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency efforts.

That alone will put a decent breeze in the turbines of the Albanese government’s energy policy. And then Bowen can head to Baku, Azerbaijan, next year and hope to twist the ratchet a little further.

Slow-motion, back-room fights over words, phrases and sub-clauses might not make for a gripping news yarn. But the stakes are higher than they look, both for the world’s fight against climate change and for the Albanese government’s political and policy fortunes at home.