A new draft released on Monday of what's known as the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — called for countries to reduce "consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner."
Many countries and activists despaired at the lack of a call for all fossil-fuels to be phased out.
The release triggered a frenzy of fine-tuning by government envoys and rapid analysis by advocacy groups, just hours before the planned late morning finish to the talks on Tuesday.
Bangladesh climate envoy Sabre Chowdhury said a revised text would be presented Tuesday morning that takes into account the many comments from participants.
"It'll be new. To what extent it's improved remains to be seen," he said shortly after the session ended at around 2 am.
Some Pacific Island nations say the current text amounts to a death sentence for their countries.
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber - who is also the CEO of an oil company - has described the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times as his "north star" but critics say the draft falls drastically short.
The proposed text "doesn't even come close to delivering 1.5 as a north star," Tuvalu's delegation chief Seve Paeniu said. "For us this is a matter of survival. We cannot put loopholes in our children's futures."
The proposed text is being fine tuned as the COP28 summit heads into its final stretch. (EPA PHOTO)
United States climate envoy John Kerry says the language on fossil fuels in the text "does not meet the test" of keeping 1.5 alive.
"I, like most of you here, refuse to be part of a charade" of not phasing out fossil fuels, Kerry said. "This is a war for survival."
Zhao Yingmin, China's vice minister for Ecology and Environment, said at the meeting that "the draft fails to address the concerns of developing countries on some key issues" and in particular the idea that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025.
Philda Nani Kereng of Botswana said her country "is a developing country ... it's still, you know, exploiting natural resources for economic development, for livelihood improvement, for job creation and so forth."
Talking about what the outcome of the talks should be, she said "we are very careful to make sure that it's not going to sort of stop us from developing our people."
In the 21-page document, the words oil and natural gas did not appear, and the word coal appeared twice. It also had a single mention of carbon capture, a technology touted by some to reduce emissions although it's untested at scale.
Al-Jaber skipped a planned news conference and headed straight into a meeting with delegates just after 6:30 pm It was the second time for him to cancel a press briefing on Monday.
"We have a text and we need to agree on the text," al-Jaber said. "The time for discussion is coming to an end and there's no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now."
He added: "We must still close many gaps. We don't have time to waste."
"COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure," former US Vice President and climate activist Al Gore posted on X. "The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. ... It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously."
But Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa said the "text lays the ground for transformational change."
"This is the first COP where the word fossil fuels are actually included in the draft decision. This is the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era," he said.
