By Valerie Volcovici, Nailia Bagirova and Kate Abnett
BAKU (Reuters) -U.S. local weather envoy John Podesta on Monday urged governments to maintain religion within the nation’s promise to fight world warming, saying Donald Trump can sluggish, not cease, the transition from fossil fuels when he returns to workplace in January.
The annual U.N. local weather summit started on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, with many nation delegations involved Trump’s victory within the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 would hinder progress to restrict planetary warming.
Trump has promised to once more take away america, the world’s greatest historic greenhouse gasoline emitter, from worldwide local weather cooperation and maximise the nation’s already record-high fossil gasoline manufacturing.
“For these of us devoted to local weather motion, final week’s consequence in america is clearly bitterly disappointing,” Podesta stated on the summit.
“However what I need to let you know right this moment is that whereas america federal authorities, underneath Donald Trump, might put local weather motion on the again burner, the work to include local weather change goes to proceed in america.”
He stated the Inflation Discount Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s landmark local weather laws offering billions of {dollars} in subsidies for clear vitality, would proceed to drive investments in photo voltaic, wind and different applied sciences, and that U.S. state governments would additionally push emissions cuts via regulation.
“I do not suppose that any of that’s reversible. Can it’s slowed down? Perhaps. However the course is obvious,” he stated.
Though Trump has promised to rescind the IRA, to take action would require an act of Congress – and that might be elusive as a consequence of assist from some Republican lawmakers whose districts profit from IRA-linked investments.
AGENDA WRANGLING
In addition to the U.S. election, the talks in Baku are vying for consideration with financial considerations and wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
That complicates the summit’s ambition to resolve the precedence agenda merchandise – a deal for as much as $1 trillion in annual local weather finance for growing international locations, changing a goal of $100 billion.
U.N. local weather chief Simon Stiell sought to whip up momentum.
“Let’s dispense with the concept that local weather finance is charity,” he stated on the Baku stadium. “An bold new local weather finance objective is totally within the self-interest of each nation, together with the biggest and wealthiest.”
This 12 months is on observe to be the most well liked on file. Wealthy and poor international locations alike have been challenged by excessive climate occasions, together with flooding disasters in Africa, coastal Spain and the U.S. state of North Carolina, and drought gripping South America, Mexico and the U.S. West.
However even agreeing considered one of COP29’s first duties proved a problem: the agenda for negotiations was delayed by greater than 5 hours earlier than being accepted.
4 sources with data of the closed-door discussions, asking to stay nameless, stated the European Union and small island international locations had demanded nations talk about methods to construct on final 12 months’s deal to transition away from fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel-producing Gulf states needed to restrict discussions to the weather of final 12 months’s COP28 deal associated to finance, the sources stated.
Ultimately, international locations agreed they might talk about the COP28 settlement, however left open the place these talks would focus.
Additionally they endorsed a set of carbon credit score high quality requirements seen as vital to launching a U.N.-backed world carbon market to fund tasks that cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions.
And international locations sidestepped a spat over commerce tensions, after China had requested to incorporate considerations about some international locations’ commerce insurance policies on the COP29 agenda. Beijing withdrew its proposal, settling as a substitute for casual talks on the difficulty with Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency.
Commerce has gained significance as a problem for China, already going through EU tariffs, due to Trump’s marketing campaign promise to impose 20% tariffs on all international items, and 60% on Chinese language items.
Many additionally fear U.S. disengagement may lead different international locations to backpedal on current local weather pledges or reduce future ambitions.
“Individuals shall be saying, nicely, the U.S. is the second greatest emitter. It is the most important economic system on the earth … If they do not set themselves an bold goal, why would we?” Marc Vanheukelen, the EU’s local weather ambassador from 2019 to 2023, informed Reuters.
Podesta stated China, at the moment the world’s greatest emitter, has an obligation to step up, partially by growing a plan to chop emissions that’s aligned with the 2015 Paris Settlement objective to restrict planetary warming to 1.5 levels Celsius above pre-industrial ranges.
“They’ve an necessary function to play and I hope they play it,” Podesta stated.
Host Azerbaijan has lobbied governments to speed up their transfer to wash vitality whereas touting gasoline as a transition gasoline. Its oil and gasoline revenues accounted for 35% of its economic system in 2023, down from 50% two years earlier. The federal government says these revenues will decline to 22% by 2028.
President Ilham Aliyev has referred to as Azerbaijan’s fossil-fuel bounty “a present of God,” and Baku has proposed making a Local weather Finance Motion (WA:) Fund to gather voluntarily as much as $1 billion from extractive corporations throughout 10 international locations together with Azerbaijan.