In 2024, 81% of the world’s total energy supply came from burning fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Even though renewables such as solar and wind power are meeting the vast majority of net new electricity demand, fossil fuel’s share of the energy mix is still around 80%.
To stop increasing temperatures, we need to reach net-zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible. Transitioning away from fossil fuels will be the most important part of this effort. We’ll never get our fossil-fuel usage down to zero, because there are some intractable uses, but we need to get fossil emissions down to a level where we can net them out with programs that remove GHGs from the atmosphere. We have no feasible, practical, and responsible ways to net out the current levels of fossil emissions, but this might be practical if fossil emissions were reduced to 10% what they are today. That’s what we need to focus on.
Both the IPCC, which issues international scientific reports on climate change, and the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which issue reports at the end of each annual meeting, require complete consensus on their reports, from all the countries who are members. Saudi Arabia and other oil and gas interests have been successful in blocking these reports from mentioning the need to transition away from fossil fuels. These vetos will probably continue, so another forum is required to coordinate our eventual fossil-fuel fade-out.
The First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels (COTAF) took place in Santa Marta, Colombia from April 24 to 29, 2026. Fifty-three countries participated, as well as some sub-national entities, including the State of California. Formerly called the “Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty,” the effort to promote the Fossil Fuel Treaty continues. It was started around 2015 by Pacific Island Nations, which are likely to be inundated with sea-level rise in the not-too-distant future, and was more formally “launched” at New York Climate Week in 2020. The effort is now supported by a coalition of 18 nation-states, 4,380 civil-society organizations and more than 199 sub-national governments, including California. Needless to say, the US is not one of the countries supporting this proposed treaty. The US has become a petrostate like Saudi Arabia.
The goal of the treaty is to stop the expansion of coal, oil, and gas by ending all new exploration and production, and then to equitably phase out existing fossil fuel production “in line with the 1.5°C goal.” More specifics on how these goals will be accomplished will need to be in the text of the proposed treaty, but that text hasn’t been developed yet.
There will be a virtual global assembly of the campaign for a fossil fuel treaty on September 22. You can find out more information about it, and register to attend. The organization is planning a new in-person global conference for 2027.
In 2023, California passed Senate Joint Resolution No. 2, endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation treaty, and affirming the State’s commitment to a “just and equitable transition” and the cessation of new fossil fuel infrastructure development. Given this support for phasing out fossil fuels, why can’t the state pass legislation that would phase out fossil-fuel development in California? It would prohibit expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure, and would provide for a linear phase-out of oil and gas production in the state over some reasonable period of time, say 10 years. Such a bill would have no chance of passing in the legislature, since it would be opposed by the unholy alliance of labor unions and oil companies.
We’ve just gone through the hottest summer on record, with heat waves, droughts, and fires in many countries around the world. The world will continue to heat up until we stop burning fossil fuels. So far, the measures put forth to stop global heating have been “carrots,” such as subsidies for green energy and funds for installing more EV chargers. We need to start enacting “sticks,” like prohibitions on the burning of fossil fuels. It would send a signal to the market if a jurisdiction like California prohibited the burning of natural gas for heating homes starting in 2045. Such a measure would force those with natural-gas heaters to plan to replace them with heat pumps before 2045, and would incentivize those who are buying new heating systems to go electric.
Enacting such a measure is currently a political impossibility, even in a Democratic, supposedly liberal state such as California. The politics at the federal level are hopeless. The EU, even though it is the most climate-friendly of the three big economies, has not enacted any “stick” policies to force consumers and businesses to abandon fossil fuels. The Fossil Fuel Treaty will contain the “sticks” that we need, and it deserves our full support.