Barbados’ climate leader, Prime Minister Mia Mottley, has invited President Donald Trump for a face-to-face meeting in which she hopes to find “common ground” and convince him that climate action is in his interests.
“Let’s find a common purpose to save the planet and protect livelihoods,” she told the Guardian at the United Nations’ Cop29 climate change summit in Azerbaijan. “We are human beings, and despite our differences, we have the ability to meet face-to-face. We want humanity to survive. And now we see evidence (of the climate crisis) almost every week. ”
She believes that only through private meetings among world leaders can we achieve the large-scale changes needed to combat climate change. “President Trump has been very clear about the importance of these types of face-to-face conversations about things that he believes he can solve.”
Prime Minister Mottley, the prime minister who took Barbados out of the Commonwealth and made it a republic, has made a number of recent changes since taking to the stage at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 and impassioned world leaders to “do more.” It has become a shocking presence at the United Nations Climate Change Summit. ” to avoid imposing a death sentence on her country. Since then, she has achieved global fame as a formidable champion of developing countries most affected by climate change.
She has also led a movement among developing countries and some developed countries to change the global financial system to generate the funds needed to transition the world to a low-carbon economy.
President Trump’s re-election has cast a deep shadow over Cop29, which opened in Baku on Monday. A number of world leaders flew in for the summit, but most heads of government from the world’s largest economies refrained from attending.
Participants fear that President Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, eliminate regulations and climate change targets, and pursue a “drill, drill, drill” program for more fossil fuels. . Scientists have warned that if he follows through on his campaign promises, there is little hope of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Argentine negotiators representing climate science denier Javier Millay’s government were ordered Wednesday to withdraw from Cop29 after just three days, raising concerns about the stability of the Paris climate accord.
But Motley pointed out that President Trump has shown a willingness to respond to crises before. “I think there’s potential for discussion. It’s the same warp speed that President Trump has approached the issue of vaccines and vaccine development, and I hope we encourage him and others to look at decarbonizing technologies. ,” she said.
She also believes she can show President Trump that the United States will benefit economically from tackling the climate crisis.
For example, she pointed to methane explosions from oil and gas production sites. The International Energy Agency says installing relatively simple equipment to capture and use methane instead could be profitable and should appeal to President Trump.
“Why would you want to lose money by burning gasoline when you can make money by using it?” she asked.
She also pointed to climate change. “If you can’t survive because you can’t farm because you don’t have access to water, or if the floods are now coming at you with such intensity and regularity that it’s impossible to maintain your way of life. I’m going to change where I live.
“Or if I don’t have the ability to access insurance and insurance is essential to getting a loan, I have to move from where I’m currently operating. I hope that people who have been behind the times will wake up and realize that this is something that will benefit both parties.”
Mottley also argued that it would be difficult for President Trump to completely repeal anti-inflation laws that encourage clean energy. That’s because anti-inflation laws have created new jobs and industries in many formerly depressed areas around the United States, including areas that have traditionally voted Republican.
“Over the past four years, local governments, states and the private sector have made significant investments (into a low-carbon economy) in the United States,” he said. “It’s unlikely that everything will turn around as much as some fear.”
COP29 focuses on the issue of climate finance, providing at least $1 trillion a year in aid to developing countries to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change extremes. The aim is to set a new global goal. weather.
But developed countries are likely to allocate just one-third of that to public funds, through foreign aid budgets and similar institutions such as the World Bank.
Mottley recognizes that rich countries cannot come up with enough money from their own budgets, but he argues that they should do more than they are currently committing to. She has a set of proposals known as the Bridgetown Agenda, after Barbados’ capital, that would generate more than $1 trillion a year in climate finance.
First, reforms to the World Bank that will free up hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cash and make lending cheaper and more readily available to the poorest and most vulnerable countries. Motley said these efforts have already begun and have been successful so far.
She also wants a new source of revenue, called a “global solidarity tax,” which would take money from polluting activities and use it to finance climate change. These include mandatory levies on business and first class flights and voluntary charges on economy flights that passengers can choose to pay (“because personal agency matters”). International shipping charges. The cost of fossil fuel extraction could fetch $210 billion a year. It would impose a 0.1% tax on financial transactions that raise $480 billion annually.
“The reality is that the world’s public goods require a dedicated global source of funding. And if we extend the polluter pays principle, those contributing to the problem will shoulder some of the burden. “And those who are making tremendous profits should leave a little bit of something on the table,” she said. “This is certainly the one question that binds us all, because without a planet, there would be no life that we could sustain.”
Mr. Motley also supports Brazil’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires. “When I got the (coronavirus) vaccine shot, I didn’t feel anything. I don’t think the super-rich would feel that way if they were asked to leave a little something on the table. ”
Imposing such charges is beyond the scope of Cop29 or the United Nations and does not form part of formal discussions in Azerbaijan. But a special committee – including Barbados, France, Spain and Kenya – but not the UK so far – is working to make the proposals a reality.
One of the crucial actions she wants Cop29 to take is to focus on methane. The gas comes from fossil fuel exploration, agriculture and waste and is many times more powerful than CO2 in heating the planet, but while emissions are increasing, efforts to curb it have so far So far, it has had little impact.
“We need a global methane deal,” she says. Scientists say controlling methane could prevent a 0.5 degree rise in temperature in the short term. “It seems like a no-brainer,” Motley said.
