The outcome is very far from perfect. It is better than feared but less than needed. It bows too much to the forces of international diplomacy, and too little to the immovable realities of science. Yet the COP28 climate conference in Dubai has delivered a historic and unmistakable message that the global energy system must move away from the use of coal, oil and gas.

This follows a two-week meeting in which the fundamental clash between the need for climate action and the economic reliance on fossil fuels has been laid bare to an extent rarely seen. The final agreement calls on countries to shift away from fossil fuel use for energy in order to reach net zero emissions by 2050. After nearly 30 years of UN climate COPs, this is the first to specify the need for such a decline in the use of all fossil fuels, by far the biggest contributor to global warming.

The meeting of almost every country in the world also agreed that this shift should be accelerated “in this critical decade”, “in keeping with the science”. And it recognised that limiting global warming to 1.5C required emissions almost to halve by 2030.