If you were expecting a breakthrough of global sanity from climate talks led by an oilman in Dubai, you’re probably new around these pixels.

The most hopeful spin I can offer leans on the great troubadour, Leonard Cohen, and our unofficial Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” The crack, in this case, comes after 30 years of wrangling, with all the nations of the world finally agreeing to "transition away from fossil fuels.”

On one hand, that crack simply illuminates the most butt obvious step in halting climate change — stop doing the thing causing it. That it took three decades for the world to formally utter the words “fossil fuels” is a scandal in its own right.

On the other hand, “this result would have been unheard of two years ago, especially at a COP meeting in a petrostate,” says Mohamed Adow from Power Shift Africa. “It shows that even oil and gas producers can see we’re heading for a fossil-free world.”

Climate advocates have long relied on scientists, agencies and think tanks to buttress the demand to phase out fossil fuels. Now, every nation in the world has agreed on the direction. Every national government those advocates square up against will already have agreed to the overarching goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

“That sentence will hang over every discussion from now on — especially the discussions about any further expansion of fossil fuel energy,” writes Bill McKibben. “It is — and this is important — a tool for activists to use henceforth.” It will be their job to take up chisels and crowbars, chipping away at the crack, splitting it ever wider to let the sun shine in.

The international climate process does have the ability to produce crack-widening tools. The global focus on 1.5 degrees emerged from the meetings in 2015 when the most vulnerable nations succeeded in shifting the terrain towards keeping their countries above water. So, too, the whole project of passing laws for deep carbon cuts and net zero, which supplanted nebulous gestures about reducing emissions.

Despite the concerted efforts of OPEC, western oil producers and their politicians, more than 127 countries pushed for more decisive fossil fuel commitments than merely “transitioning.” They wanted the declaration from Dubai to call for a clear fossil fuel “phaseout.” That’s well over half the countries in the world, including the biggest pumper of oil and gas — the United States — and others in the top 10, like Canada.

After so many years as that-which-shall-not-be-named, the hottest topic at this year’s climate negotiations was the debate over phasing “out,” phasing “down” or transitioning away from fossil fuels. And the initiative for a new Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty was the talk of the town.

If you catch the crack at just the right angle, you start to see a world falling out of thrall with oil and gas. A bit shout out to John Vaillant for his conception of a world in thrall, and for the tantalizing suggestion we might be falling out. Vaillant’s book Fire Weather has been winning awards and making some very prestigious best-of lists. (If you’re out hunting gifts, you might still be able to find a copy.)

Fire Weather tells the story of “The Beast” — the monstrous Fort McMurray fire of 2016. And Alberta’s current government is a poignant example of a government in thrall. The provincial conservatives managed to erase The Beast from memory, whistling past this summer’s raging fires and pinning the blame on arsonists.

Currently in stage four out of five on its drought scale, the provincial environment minister is warning farmers and other residents to prepare for a fourth consecutive summer of drought. Still no mention of climate change from the enthralled — advance blame for the coming summer is being pinned on El Niño even though the past three years of drought occurred under its opposite, La Niña.

But the most fulsome evidence of thrall comes when any dare question the supremacy of oil and gas. After COP28 gavelled to a close this week, a fully-triggered Danielle Smith raged against Steven Guilbeault’s “treachery” for pushing a phaseout of fossil fuels.

The Alberta premier demanded the federal climate change minister be fired for aligning with “radical activists” in his “misguided personal obsessions” — an odd description for what is now the stance of over half the countries on the planet.

Guilbeault had been tasked by the summit president with brokering agreement on the fossil fuel semantics. The UN climate process works by consensus, so countries like Saudi Arabia were able to block “phaseout” and insist on a more ambiguous “transition.”

But even the oiliest of petrostates are recognizing a world falling out of thrall. Pressure from the majority of countries, civil society, scientists and Mother Nature has built to the point that it is no longer possible to avoid acknowledging the need to transition away from fossil fuels.

COP28 is getting headlines as a “landmark” or even as “historic” because it finally acknowledges the main cause of climate change. It is, at the same time, grossly inadequate.

“We did not come here to sign our death warrant. We came here to fight for … a fossil fuel phaseout,” declared the Republic of the Marshall Islands. “We will not go silently to our watery graves."

The lead negotiator for Samoa spoke on behalf of small island nations decrying a “litany of loopholes” in the final text. “The course correction that is needed has not been secured,” said Anne Rasmussen.

Although governments agreed to triple renewable energy and double the rate of energy efficiency, the agreement ducked the stronger “phaseout” language for fossil fuels or any firm schedule. And there was little progress on financing the transition in less-developed countries.

The loopholes included Russia’s insistence on a role for “transitional fuels” (code for fossil gas) and some fuzzy wording around carbon capture. In one telling moment, Norway’s negotiator intervened to say, "We do carbon capture and I can testify it's not the solution to everything."

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, underlined the same point to Reuters: “Some companies, some oil-producing governments say that ‘we do want to reach the climate targets, but we want at the same time to continue to produce fossil fuels with our current business as usual plans and we will fix the gap by using carbon capture and storage.’ This is impossible.”

Scientists wanted a much more comprehensive and explicit agreement from Dubai. Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-founder of the World Weather Attribution Group, has a knack for translating statistics into stakes.

“The lukewarm agreement reached at COP28 will cost every country, no matter how rich, no matter how poor. Everyone loses,” she said. “With every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the front line of climate change and many will die.

“Until fossil fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more expensive and more uncertain place to live.”