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This week in data:

One way to glean deeper meaning from the texts is to examine the type of verbs that they use.

According to Carbon Brief analysis, the global stocktake text agreed at COP28 uses few “operative” verbs – words that demand action from countries (shown in red on the chart above).

What’s more, the key passage on fossil fuels merely “calls on” countries to take action.

As Carbon Brief’s editor Leo Hickman noted, this is the weakest of all of the terms that COP texts can use to invite countries to act.

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