| Even
before the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House, global
climate action was in a tricky spot. Major gaps exist between countries
in the developed and developing world over how to collectively bring
down emissions, mitigate the calamitous effects posed by a warming
planet and fund these efforts. Within some Western democracies, there’s a
growing backlash to green policies, with voters resenting onerous
carbon taxes, the loss of fuel subsidies and the prospect of stricter
environmental regulations that raise household costs. All
the while, the planetary warnings are blaring at full pitch. Scientists
expect this year to be the hottest on record, supplanting 2023, the
titleholder. “It will also probably be the first full calendar year when
temperatures rose more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial
average — a critical line signaling that Earth is crossing into
territory where some extreme climate effects may be irreversible,” noted
my colleague Kasha Patel. World leaders,
activists, policymakers and corporate executives are in Baku, capital
of oil-rich Azerbaijan, for the annual U.N.-backed climate conference.
The two-week mega-summit, dubbed COP29, opened Monday, but many
prominent heads of state, including President Joe Biden and Chinese
President Xi Jinping, have skipped it. (For some, the session of the
Group of 20 major economies in Brazil takes precedence.) COP29
is not going smoothly. Inside, attendees vent their frustration with
the slow pace of negotiations over a new deal intended to raise $1
trillion in climate financing for poorer nations. Outside, campaigners
lament the presence of more than 1,700 lobbyists from the fossil fuel
industry. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said it was “beyond absurd”
that such a critical meeting was being hosted by “an authoritarian
petrostate.” But that’s now par for the course for the COPs — the
previous two summits were held in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. And
then there’s the shadow of Trump. In his first term, he withdrew from
the Paris climate accords, whose principles and goals undergird the COP
meetings; he has promised to do it again. He has scoffed at the science
of climate change as a “hoax,” tried to defund climate research and
ridiculed Democratic efforts to reckon with it — such as Biden’s mammoth
Inflation Reduction Act — as a “scam.” And he has vowed to “drill,
baby, drill,” even as the United States is pumping more oil and gas than
it ever has. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental
Protection Agency, and Doug Burgum, tapped to be Trump’s “energy czar,”
could repeal myriad climate-focused regulations at the federal level,
end subsidies for clean energy and pursue drilling on federal lands. In
Baku, John Podesta, Biden’s climate envoy, didn’t mince words. “In
January, we will inaugurate a president whose relationship to climate
change is captured by the words ‘hoax’ and ‘fossil fuels,’” Podesta
said. “None of this is a hoax. It is real. It’s a matter of life and
death.” But Podesta tried to assure his
counterparts that Trump could only slow, not reverse, some of the major
steps undertaken in the United States, especially at the state level,
where some Republican politicians will want to preserve the slew of
government funding unleashed for local investments in major renewable
energy and infrastructure projects. Even top oil executives are urging
Trump to maintain momentum. “Interest
groups will probably save most of the” Inflation Reduction Act, the
Economist noted. “It has resulted in about $130 billion in investment,
with perhaps four-fifths going into Republican districts. Oil and gas
companies and power utilities support its subsidies for hydrogen and
carbon capture, and some conservatives like its funding of nuclear
power, energy storage and sustainable aviation fuels.” David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, agreed. “There
may be some things in the IRA that the Trump administration would be
able to slow down somewhat, but … the breadth of the support for what’s
in the IRA is greater than one might think,” Waskow told reporters
Monday. “It’s pretty clear politically at this point that those kind of
tax credits will stay in place.” But
Trump still is likely to roil the global debate. He returns to the White
House amid a new crop of right-wing allies who share his climate
skepticism and deregulatory zeal. After Trump and radical libertarian
Argentine President Javier Milei chatted this past week, it emerged that
Argentina had withdrawn its delegation from Baku and was considering
quitting the Paris accords as well. Milei has described climate change
as a “socialist lie” and branded climate scientists “lazy socialists.”
Upon taking office in December, he dissolved his nation’s Environment
Ministry. In Baku, there’s plenty of
other tense geopolitics unfolding without Trump. Smaller island nations
on the front lines of climate change have grown impatient with what they
see as the inadequacy of the efforts made by wealthier nations. James
Marape, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, announced this year that
his country would not send a delegation to Baku because the “big carbon
footprint holders of the world” don’t fulfill their pledges. Separately,
Azerbaijan’s long-ruling President Ilham Aliyev used the host’s dais
this week to launch into a tirade against France and the Netherlands
over their treatment of former colonies or current territories in the
Caribbean and South Pacific. Aliyev claimed the European powers were
“brutally” suppressing the climate concerns of these islands, but
analysts said his broadside was motivated by European criticism of
Azerbaijan’s capture and depopulation of the Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. As a result, France’s top climate official, Agnès
Pannier-Runacher, canceled her trip to Baku. These
unacceptable statements risk to undermine the conference’s vital
climate objectives and the credibility of Azerbaijan’s COP29
presidency,” lamented Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat. Prominent
advocates have thrown up their hands in despair. On Friday, a group of
influential climate policy experts including former U.N. secretary
general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and
former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres submitted a letter to the
United Nations calling for a complete overhaul of the COP process,
including staging smaller meetings engineered around more decisive
action and giving developing nations a greater voice and fossil fuel
lobbyists a smaller one. “It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” they wrote. “We need a shift from negotiation to implementation.” |