What Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels Really Means

Your all-access pass to FP

The COP deal was a breakthrough, but subsidy policy will be key in achieving its goals.

By Cameron Abadi, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy, and Adam Tooze, a columnist at Foreign Policy and director of the European Institute at Columbia University. Sign up for Adam’s Chartbook newsletter here.

A lone wind turbine spins in front of exhaust plumes billowing into a hazy gray sky from five cooling towers at a coal-fired power station in Germany.

A lone wind turbine spins in front of exhaust plumes from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station in Jänschwalde, Germany, on April 12, 2007. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Nearly 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists had access to this year’s annual COP summit in Dubai—the U.N.-led conference on climate change—almost four times as many as were present at the previous year’s edition. Fossil fuels were also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge sticking point in the negotiations, with oil-producing countries at loggerheads with most other parts of the world. There were even rumors—which ultimately proved unfounded—that this might be the first time that a COP summit would conclude without any agreement at all. Policymakers and economic actors are now trying to figure out what the agreement entails.

Cameron Abadi is a deputy editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @CameronAbadi

Adam Tooze is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a history professor and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of Chartbook, a newsletter on economics, geopolitics, and history. Twitter: @adam_tooze