The annual U.N. climate summit began Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, with many country delegates concerned that Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 will block progress on limiting planetary warming.
Trump has pledged to once again remove the United States, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, from international climate cooperation and expand the country’s record high production of fossil fuels.
“For those of us dedicated to climate action, last week’s results in the United States are clearly disappointing,” Podesta said at the summit.
“But what I want to say today is that while the federal government of the United States, under Donald Trump, can put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change will continue in the United States.”
He said the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law that provides billions of dollars in subsidies for clean energy, will continue to drive investment in solar, wind and other technologies, and that US state governments will also reduce emissions. the law. “I don’t think anything can be reversed. Can it be slowed down? Maybe. But the direction is clear,” he said. Although Trump has promised to repeal the IRA, doing so would require Congressional action — and that may be elusive given the support of some Republican lawmakers whose counties benefit from IRA-related investments.
WRANGLING AGENDA
Apart from the election of Trump as the president of the world’s largest economy, the talks in Baku are competing for attention with economic problems and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
That fulfills the summit’s ambition to complete the priority agenda item – a deal of up to $1 trillion in annual climate finance for developing countries, replacing the $100 billion target.
UN climate chief Simon Stilll is trying to build momentum.
“Let’s get rid of the idea that climate finance is charity,” he said at the Baku stadium. “An ambitious new climate finance goal is in the self-interest of every country, including the biggest and richest.”
This year is on track to be the hottest on record. Rich and poor countries alike are challenged by extreme weather events, including catastrophic floods in Africa, coastal Spain and the US state of North Carolina, droughts in South America, Mexico and the US West.
But even agreeing on one of the first tasks of COP29 has proved challenging: setting the agenda for the negotiations has been delayed for several hours.
Three sources with knowledge of the closed-door discussions, who asked to remain anonymous, said the European Union and the small island nation are demanding that countries follow last year’s deal – including how to proceed with an agreement to transition from coal, oil and gas.
The Caspian Sea country, home to the world’s first oil well, is facing pressure to make progress on last year’s COP28 pledge to transition away from fossil fuels.
But the fossil fuel-producing Gulf states want to limit discussions on elements of last year’s COP28 deal related to finance, the source said.
Countries also disagreed on a proposal from China to include trade in the COP29 agenda.
Trade has become an important issue for China, already facing EU tariffs, due to Trump’s campaign promise to impose tariffs of 20% on all foreign goods, and 60% on Chinese goods.
Many also worry that a U.S. withdrawal could lead other countries to backtrack on existing climate pledges or scale back future ambitions.
“People will say, well, the US is the second largest emitter. It’s the largest economy in the world… If they don’t set ambitious targets, why should we?” Marc Vanheukelen, EU climate ambassador from 2019 to 2023, told Reuters.
Talks host Azerbaijan has lobbied the government to speed up its move to clean energy while touting gas as a transition fuel.
Oil and gas revenues account for 35% of the economy by 2023, down from 50% two years earlier. The government says that profit will drop to 22% by 2028.
President Ilham Aliyev has called Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel bounty a “gift from God,” and Baku has proposed creating a Climate Finance Action Fund to voluntarily collect up to $1 billion from extractive companies in 10 countries including Azerbaijan. (Additional reporting by Kate Abnett, Gloria Dickie, William James, Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness; Editing by Katy Daigle, Lincoln Feast, Timothy Heritage and Barbara Lewis)
