For the first time in more than three decades of international climate diplomacy, all parties explicitly agreed to move away from using fossil fuels in energy systems. These systems generate vast wealth, but also the bulk of the world’s emissions. On December 13th the meeting’s president, Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, announced that the agreement would be passed without objections. In the end the conference delivered the same combination of deliberate choreography and otherworldly fantasy. Should the developing nations be excepted from the agreement because of the state of the poverty and poor economies ?

