Is this the end of fossil fuels' age?

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, president of the UN climate conference in Dubai, known as COP28, branded the agreement a "paradigm shift" in the world's fight against climate change. Small island nations, however, slammed the deal, with the Marshall Islands describing it as a canoe with a "weak and leaky hull, full of holes".

So, is this a historic leap forward, or just the bare minimum?

There are two prisms to assess this - climate science, and the politics of change.

First, the science. In Paris in 2015, the world agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees - the threshold beyond which the severity and prevalence of climate impacts will intensify.

Last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the target as being on "life support".

The hope was Dubai would be able "keep 1.5 alive" by making a strong global commitment to phase out fossil fuels, in line with scientific projections. But with only a weak, caveated call to transition away from fossil fuels, the death of the target looks all but assured.

This is deeply sobering but not surprising. Even when agreed in Paris, it was unlikely the goal would be met.

In 2021 the International Energy Agency gave the world a 50 per cent chance of meeting the 1.5 degrees target if it stopped new fossil fuel exploration and coal plant development immediately.

Recent estimates give us a 14 per cent chance of meeting the target, all while billions continue to flow to fossil fuel projects, in Australia and abroad.

Disappointing as this is, the world must continue to aim high. Every tenth of a degree reduction in warming will see a reduction in physical climate impacts.

The world may be past the point where we can avoid overshooting 1.5 degrees, but efforts must be redoubled to keep warming as far below 2 degrees as possible.

On that count, a global stocktake of climate action in Dubai clearly showed that while the world is not moving quickly enough, expected levels of global warming have been reduced from 4 degrees to between 2.1-2.8 degrees if national commitments are implemented.

In terms of the politics of global co-operation, COP28 was not an abject failure.

It did not fall apart with no agreement, which looked very possible at the eleventh hour. Instead, the centre held, and the world took a small, delayed step towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Weak as it is, the COP28 outcome does spell the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.

This is significant - a key purpose of UN climate talks is to send a global political signal, exerting pressure on governments, private sector and civil society.

Encouragingly, global ambition is clearly rising. More than 100 countries arrived at COP28 ready to support a much stronger, clearer call for a global fossil fuel phase out.

This included highly climate vulnerable island nations, as well as the United States, Europe and Australia. Fierce opposition remains, however, including from the oil-rich OPEC bloc and Russia, who ultimately succeeded in watering down the outcome.

COP President Al Jaber, also the head of the United Arab Emirates' state-owned oil company, played a decisive role in where the compromise landed.

The final agreement leaves wide scope for the fossil fuel industry to continue, merely calling on countries to "contribute to ... global efforts" to transition away from fossil fuels, taking into account their "different national circumstances".

Beyond fossil fuels, COP28 resulted in a range of other agreements, including a pledge to triple renewable energy globally and double the average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

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Parties also agreed to establish a fund to compensate vulnerable nations for climate related loss and damage. As ever, how these outcomes are implemented will be key.

A hallmark of most UN compromises is that parties agree on a common set of words, but not on their meaning. If major economies fully exploit the caveats included in Dubai, or over index the role of "transition fuels" (gas) and "abatement technologies" (carbon capture and storage, which is yet to be proven at scale) in their national plans, then 1.5 degrees will die, and net zero will go with it.

Multilateralism is, by nature, incrementalism. In requiring consensus, the UN's climate change framework is cursed with trying to maintain a minimum standard for global action rather than setting a benchmark for global leadership.

COP28 didn't issue the clarion call or instill the urgency the science requires.

But it did deliver the bare minimum to keep the world moving forward in the most challenging of circumstances.