What are your impressions of COP28, held in Dubai last year?

In a lot of ways, COP 28 was both historic and completely inadequate for what we need to address the severity of the climate crisis. One of the reasons I think that this COP was historic is that for the first time, the conversation on fossil fuels was dragged center stage in the climate negotiations. It almost seems crazy that it was the first time we are having a real conversation about fossil fuel phase out at a COP. But it was the first time.

My first COP was in Bali. I talked to decision-makers about how we need to constrain the production of oil. People treated me like I was crazy. Many decision-makers, academics, and ministers said, ‘Fossil fuel production is not a climate issue, we only deal with emissions.’ That is the same reaction to the conversation even one year ago. So, this COP represented a historic shift in the climate policy discussion, a recognition that fossil fuels are the primary cause of the climate crisis. Also, acknowledgment that by just focusing on emissions reduction and refusing to address the need to phase out the production of fossil fuels and plan for how we phase out fossil fuels, we were not getting to the heart of the problem.

COP 28 opened up a huge conversation and we're starting to see the benefits. Now it's harder for nation-states that don't want to take ambitious action or companies who refuse to ensure absolute emissions and production decline to hide behind concepts of net zero or modeling that includes overestimation of technologies to reduce emissions. New questions are being asked of fossil fuel decision-makers that don't leave them as much room to hide: ‘Are you going to increase the production of oil, gas, and coal? When are you going to decline it? What's the timeline of the phase out?’

As the 2015 Paris Agreement is an international treaty on climate change, you have been a proponent of a similar, fossil fuels treaty among nations. What would such a treaty entail?

It’s shocking that the Paris Agreement doesn't include the words oil, gas, coal, or fossil fuels. We know that they are responsible for 86% of emissions trapped in our atmosphere today and causing an increase in fires, floods, and extreme weather. Yet, there aren't mechanisms to constrain the production of fossil fuels in the Paris Agreement. Just as most climate policies for the last thirty years, it focuses just on the demand side, not on the supply side. There are almost no other global issues in history where we would only look at the demand and not the supply in trying to address the problems. For example, consider tobacco, CFCs, and the Montreal Protocol.

The Paris Agreement has a commitment from nation-states to meet a scientific target of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees (C). It has significant mechanisms to help and encourage countries to reduce emissions, but it doesn't include ways for countries to collaborate in reducing production. That's what the Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty would do and act as a complementary initiative to the Paris Agreement.

The treaty would basically do three things. First, it would have agreements inside of it for countries to stop the expansion of fossil fuel production. Currently, we're not only unsuccessful in reducing fossil fuel production, we're growing it. We're on track to produce 110% more oil, gas, and coal than we could ever burn under a 1.5-degree scenario. Every day we spend billions of dollars to extract more fossil fuel sources that we know we can’t use if we want to meet our climate targets. The fossil fuel treaty would have agreements to stop expansion everywhere. Secondly, it would have mechanisms inside of it to manage the winddown of fossil fuel production. The third pillar of the treaty is fast-tracking solutions to ensure a just transition is equitable and fair. That's the key.

Currently, who decides who's going to produce fossil fuels? The markets do. There's no justice or equity baked into the markets. The fossil fuel treaty would have agreements between countries about who gets to produce what fossil fuels and how much over what period of time.

The majority of oil and gas planned expansion for the next five years globally is in the United States. However, the U.S. has already benefited greatly from the production of fossil fuels and has contributed greatly to the climate crisis that we're in. If the United States takes up most of that carbon budget, that means other countries can't produce fossil fuels and their economies don't get to benefit from that.

The even bigger problem is that every country wants to be the last barrel sold. They know we need to use less and we need to produce less but they're all racing to produce more. For example, countries are drilling for more oil just to feed their debt. Ecuador is drilling for more oil in the heart of the Amazon not because they want that oil, not because they don't believe in climate change, but because they don't have a choice because they need to feed their debt.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty could have debt forgiveness included in some agreements to keep carbon in the ground. There could be trade agreements between countries to alleviate the economic pressure that leads to more fossil fuel production. Those are some of the mechanisms that we're looking at within a fossil fuel treaty.

To summarize, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty would be an agreement between nation-states to stop the expansion and manage the wind-down of fossil fuels in a way that is equitable and fair.

You have been a long-time activist for environmentalism and the progression of green energy, not only dealing with governments but corporations as well. What major issues have you encountered to promote the control of fossil fuel production?

When I started in this work, I was pretty naive about the influence of the fossil fuel industry. I had experiences over the previous decade of my career working in forest conservation creating agreements with people within the forest and logging industries. In that work, I discovered that many who worked on the other side of the issue got into forestry because they loved forests. I found unlikely allies in them and was able to create agreements that were very strong because they included environmentalists and scientists in industry. When I started working on climate change and fossil fuels, I approached it in the same way. I met with the CEOs and senior management of oil companies to try and understand why they weren't they reading the climate science. What was their plan?

I found some good people in the fossil fuel industry who are stuck in bad systems. However, what I underestimated was the power of the fossil fuel industry in trying to influence policy to maintain their profit margins. These are the most profitable companies in history. The fossil fuel industry has made $2 billion a day every day for the last fifty years. Right now, the fossil fuel industry, despite having the most profitable companies on the planet, is receiving the most handouts from governments.

The IMF reported last year that $7 trillion in subsidies went to fossil fuel companies. That's the $13 million a minute in taxpayer money going to the fossil fuel companies in subsidies. There is a powerful incentive to maintain that profit margin from a very small percentage of people on the planet. They justify it by saying they know the world has to use less fossil fuels, but as long as the world is using fossil fuels, it might as well be theirs. Each one of them is trying to produce more and get more of the marketplace at the moment in history when we need to be producing less.

We now have solutions in renewable energy and electrification to replace fossil fuels. However, our policies are constantly being weakened in large part by the influence of the fossil fuel industry. We've seen that over and over again in academic studies and lawsuits that are happening around the world. The oil and gas companies knew about climate change fifty years ago and knew their products were the cause of it. They hid that. They denied it. They funded denial. They delayed the implementation of policy. They continue to do that through their influence every day.

We saw that at COP 28, where the majority of countries supported a fossil fuel phase out and stronger language in the text than what we got. But the countries who stand to benefit the most from production, who all had oil and gas executives on their national delegations, are the ones who fought to weaken the language to ensure that it didn't call for a decline in fossil fuel production and ensure the language continued to recognize the role of transition fuels, which is just a way of getting social acceptability to the continued expansion of gas and LNG.

When I started working on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, what I discovered is that many treaties have been developed by a coalition of the willing, a small group of countries who wanted to have a very high bar in the rules and regulations that developed the treaty using voting rules that ensured the treaty would be binding by linking it to trade agreements and tax agreements and other mechanisms for it to be binding.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty is designed on that basis. Right now, we have 12 countries that have endorsed it and more are going to join this year. That group of countries will be a high ambition group, a block of nations that will design rules necessary to stop the expansion of fossil fuels and manage a wind-down. Even though some of the bigger countries, like the US and Saudi Arabia, may never join that treaty, what I learned from other treaties is when there is a high ambition group setting out strong standards, those standards can become a social norm in foreign policy even for countries that never sign. For example, the US never signed the prohibition on nuclear weapons or the landmines treaty, but they stopped stockpiling them because it became unacceptable. You can't keep growing fossil fuel projects and say you're a climate leader. That's what we want to happen with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

One of the weaknesses of COP 28 in Dubai, and the COP process as a whole, is that it's designed to be a consensus of the countries that stand to benefit from the status quo. With the rules right now, consensus must be gained from 190 countries to change the process. Thirty years ago, Saudi Arabia, in the climate negotiations, made sure that the process for the Conference of Parties, the United Nations Climate Change Negotiation, would be one of consensus and not one of voting. They did that because if it's a consensus process, then any country, even a major fossil fuel developing country like Saudi Arabia, can stop an agreement from moving forward. The result is, that for thirty years, climate negotiations have reflected the lowest common denominator, the weakest agreement. Moreover, the treaty is non-binding. I recently had this conversation with former Vice President Al Gore who's proposing that the COP rules change.

The fossil fuel industry's influence on our political decision-makers, their ability to weaken and delay climate policy at a national level and an international level, is the greatest barrier today to the security of the planet.

How would you characterize the current state of renewable energy?

Exciting. Technology is growing far faster than anyone expected it to be. There have been more technological advances in the last couple of years than there have been in the last twenty. Renewable energy today is cheaper. It's cheaper than at any other time in our history. It's far cheaper than fossil fuels. It is also now available at scale around the world.

Of course, there are other major technological breakthroughs that we hope will continue to happen and need to happen. We can't currently replace 100% of the uses of fossil fuels, but we can get pretty close. A lot of people will look at renewable energy, electrification, and technology for battery storage and say, ‘We still have problems with air travel.’ But air travel is only 2% of global emissions. If we implement the renewable energy potential that we have, which is massive, many studies say that we have the potential to almost achieve 100% renewable energy globally. By implementing those systems and developing the infrastructure to support those systems, then we could replace almost all of our fossil fuel use today

The problem is that the atmosphere doesn't care if we build a solar farm. Ultimately, what the atmosphere cares about is whether or not we're reducing the amount of carbon that's going into the atmosphere and getting trapped there. Even though we are producing more and more renewable energy and related infrastructure every day, and see more commitments to renewable energy and infrastructure, unless we agree to reduce fossil fuels, the benefits from green technology are not going to save us. That's why it's essential that as we build renewable energy and infrastructure for electrification, we are simultaneously stopping the expansion of fossil fuel production and infrastructure, winding it down, and decommissioning it.

What can the average person do to positively impact climate change efforts and green energy?

To get involved. I invite people to make the fossil fuel treaty their own. It's an idea and the reason it's picking up traction around the world is because hundreds of thousands of people are figuring out how they can engage with it. People should write to their prime ministers, presidents, and members of government. People are organizing teachers and scientists to support the fossil fuel treaty. They're getting their city councils to pass motions.

In fact, California just passed a motion. We have no staff there. That happened because a group of individuals rallied around the idea and just did it. This is a movement that is growing around the world in churches, cities, and states, and it is forcing decision-makers to address this critical and urgent issue of constraining fossil fuel production and putting all of our efforts into building that clean energy and renewable energy. That's critical because, over the years, we have come to see ourselves more as consumers than as citizens. We are told that our job is just to buy a bike instead of a car or save up for a Prius or a Tesla or put on a sweater and turn down heating. There is no question that there are things we can change in our lifestyle and we should do everything we can to live sustainably but we need to see ourselves as citizens and not just as consumers.

Our elected officials work for us. It's more important for people to pick up the phone and call their elected member of parliament, call the office of their elected official, write a letter, or organize petitions than it is for people to worry about whether or not they should be eating bananas or wine with a large carbon footprint. The idea of the personal carbon footprint is an idea made famous by BP twenty years ago. The oil company has wanted us to feel guilty about our fossil fuel use and for the onus to be on us instead of them for producing the products.

I think the most important thing that people can do today is to organize in their communities to make sure their elected officials know that they want them to act on constraining fossil fuels and climate change, and that it's important to them. Our politicians will spend time on the issues they think voters care about and that's why it's up to us to make sure they know we care about this.

Tzeporah Berman BA, MES, LLD (honoris causa) has been designing advocacy campaigns and advising governments for over 30 years. She is the International Program Director at Stand.earth and the Chair and Founder of the Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty Initiative. Tzeporah publishes and speaks widely on fossil fuels and climate change. She is the author of This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge, published by Random House. For six years she was the Executive Director of the Tarsands Network Strategy tasked with developing strategies for pipeline and tarsands campaigns and related grant dockets for philanthropic foundations. She has also held positions advising the British Columbia government and in Alberta Co-Chairing the Oil Sands Advisory Working Group tasked with making recommendations to implement climate change policy in the oilsands. Dr. Berman holds an honorary doctorate from the University of British Columbia and was an adjunct professor at York University for 5 years. In 2019 she was awarded the Climate Breakthrough Award of $2 million dollars to develop a bold new global climate strategy and in 2021 she gave a widely viewed TED Talk presenting the case for a global treaty to phase out fossil fuels.