Critique: Gustavo Petro’s Last Push to Phase Out Fossil Fuels

Source: jacobin
Authors: ByJune Loper
URL: https://jacobin.com/2026/05/colombia-petro-fossil-fuels-summit

What the article reports

Colombia and the Netherlands co-hosted a fifty-eight-country summit in Santa Marta (April 24–29) focused on phasing out fossil fuels, framed as a push beyond UN COP limitations. The piece covers the conference's structure, Colombia's domestic policy moves under President Petro, fault lines between technocratic and social-transformation approaches, and criticism of Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs). It also notes Colombia's upcoming election and what a change of government could mean for climate policy.

Factual accuracy — Adequate

Most verifiable claims are specific and plausible. The article correctly identifies the Drummond terminal in Santa Marta, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty's endorsement by "eighteen nation-states," and Colombia's ISDS withdrawal. The claim that "fossil fuels weren't even mentioned at COPs" for thirty years is attributed to Tzeporah Berman and thus shielded as quotation, but it is historically imprecise — fossil fuels appeared in UNFCCC texts from the 1990s, and the article doesn't note the omission. The figure that Colombia "has faced twenty-four such [ISDS] claims totaling more than $13 billion" and that this represents "roughly 11 percent of its annual budget" is specific enough to verify and consistent with publicly available data. The "$1.2 trillion each year" in fossil fuel subsidies and "$30 million every hour in unearned profit" figures are presented without sourcing (the Global Witness/Guardian report is cited for the profit figure but only vaguely). The claim that Colombia is "the world's fifth-largest coal exporter" is broadly consistent with trade data, though rankings fluctuate year to year. No outright factual errors are apparent, but the vague sourcing on several statistics prevents a top score.

Framing — Tendentious

1. "fossil capitalism's stronghold" — The phrase "fossil capitalism" is a term of art from left political ecology; presenting it as plain description rather than a theoretical framing choice steers readers toward a particular analytical lens without attribution.

2. "a new 'global climate democracy'" — The article ends by endorsing Torres's label approvingly ("marks a significant step toward what Torres has called"), blending the minister's rhetoric with the author's own closing argument.

3. "the US and Israel–led war in Iran" — This is a highly contested characterization of an ongoing geopolitical situation; it is presented as background fact, not as one interpretation among competing framings.

4. "green capitalism" and "false solutions" — Both are movement slogans presented without quotation marks or attribution in several passages, as though they are neutral descriptors rather than contested political positions.

5. "fossil-fueled authoritarianism" — The closing sentence uses this compound as an established category, but it is an interpretive claim with no prior grounding in the article and no attribution.

6. The sequencing of the JETP section places critical voices (Reyes calling it "a strategy for colonial control") without any counterpoint from JETP designers or recipient-country governments that have welcomed the arrangements.

Source balance

Ratio: Approximately 7 pro-phase-out/radical : 1 technocratic : 0 pro-extraction or skeptical. No representative of fossil fuel industries, JETP-recipient governments with positive views, or any voice defending the market-based approaches the article critiques is quoted or paraphrased. Rockström is the sole voice associated with a less radical framing, and he is not given space to respond to the movement's critiques.

Omissions

1. Strongest case for JETPs. The article quotes one activist calling JETPs "a strategy for colonial control" but omits any perspective from JETP recipient governments (South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, Senegal) or from development economists who argue these agreements, however imperfect, represent the only available large-scale financing mechanism — information a reader would need to evaluate the critique.

2. Netherlands' rationale for North Sea gas. The Dutch government's stated justification for approving new gas extraction (energy security post-Ukraine, domestic supply considerations) is omitted; readers see only the contradiction, not the policy logic, which would let them assess the hypocrisy claim independently.

3. COP28 fossil fuel language. The 2023 COP28 agreement explicitly referenced "transitioning away from fossil fuels" — directly relevant to Berman's claim that fossil fuels "weren't even mentioned at COPs" for thirty years. Its omission leaves an imprecise quote unchallenged.

4. Colombia's fiscal dependence trade-offs. The article notes that fossil fuels account for "over 50 percent of all Colombian exports" but does not address what revenues fund domestically (social programs, debt service), which is the core tension any phase-out plan must navigate.

5. Election context and polling. The article mentions the May 31 election and candidate Iván Cepeda but offers no polling data or electoral context to help readers assess the likelihood of the scenarios described.

What it does well

• Vivid scene-setting. The opening paragraph grounding the summit in the physical landscape — "a railway juts out into the sea, loading export ships with coal hauled from vast open-pit mines" — earns its length by making the location's irony concrete and tangible.
• Conference structure explained. The three-track format (academic, people's summit, interministerial) is laid out clearly, giving readers a map of the event's architecture.
• Specific domestic policy detail. The article includes concrete figures — "forty-three oil blocks and over 286 mining applications," "twenty-four such claims totaling more than $13 billion" — that are more specific than typical climate conference coverage.
• Internal contradiction surfaced. The Netherlands co-hosting while "approv[ing] new gas extraction projects in the North Sea the very week" of the summit is a genuinely newsworthy tension, reported concisely.
• Civil society / official gap articulated. The contrast between "grassroots civil-society calls" and the "more technocratic approach" in high-level sessions is the article's most useful analytical contribution and is illustrated with specific examples.

Rating

Overall: 5/10 — Informed conference reporting undermined by unattributed movement framing, a near-uniform source pool, and absent counterarguments on the article's central policy disputes.