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Despite the election of Donald Trump, the United States will still continue to fight climate change and curb greenhouse gas emissions, the US envoy said on the opening day of COP29.
Biden administration appointee John Podesta has branded the president-elect a climate change denier and said he will eliminate environmental safeguards.
But in an early sign of progress, delegates reached agreement on long-standing deadlock points in international climate negotiations.
The move could allow wealthy countries to offset some of the pollution caused by air pollution by investing in clean energy projects and forests in developing countries.
Experts say last week’s election of President Trump is a worrying development for climate action, at least in the short term.
“The president has vowed to eliminate environmental protections and take the United States out of the Paris Agreement again,” Podesta said.
“That’s what he said, so we should believe him.”
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to keep global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Leaders from about 100 countries are scheduled to address the conference in the coming days.
COP29 was touted as an opportunity to address the important issue of providing financing to poor countries to address the effects of climate change and help prepare for climate change.
But expectations about what could be achieved at the summit have been lowered by Trump’s victory, leaving Biden administration negotiators with one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters a lame duck in the process. In reality, I ended up not being able to make many promises.
But Podesta told reporters the election was not the end of the struggle.
He believed that U.S. emissions would continue to decline, albeit at a slower pace, as a result of policies introduced by President Biden with support from states and cities.
“This fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle, and one country. As we live through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country in the world, this fight gets even bigger. ”
In a sign that countries are making progress on this issue in the absence of U.S. leadership, delegates signed the final and most controversial part of the Paris climate agreement late on the first night of COP29.
This means a global “carbon market” will be established, allowing rich countries to pay for emissions reduction projects in developing countries and use them to meet their climate obligations. . Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas released by human activities.
This proposal is very attractive to wealthy European countries because the cost of building a wind farm somewhere in Africa, for example, is much cheaper than subsidizing domestic heat pumps.
This was very difficult to come to terms with. There are concerns about fraud and whether carbon removal is genuine and permanent.
And while some of those concerns remain despite its passage, supporters say the bill could trigger up to $250 billion worth of market activity annually from the rich to the poor. It is claimed that there is.
A new scientific melancholy existed as a reminder to negotiators of the urgency of the situation. The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report released at the start of the conference that 2024 is expected to be the world’s warmest year on record.
The latest climate report also reveals that oceans are heating rapidly and glaciers are melting faster.
“We are on the road to destruction,” COP29 President Mukhtar Babaev said in his opening remarks.
He went on to cite examples of current climate impacts around the world, saying that “these are not future problems” as rising temperatures are currently causing significant damage around the world.
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Experts say recent deadly floods in Valencia, Spain, are likely to have been made worse by climate change.
The scale of the major task facing negotiators here did not improve the delegates’ mood either.
Amid the energy and economic crisis, developed countries are expected to find billions of dollars in additional climate financing for developing countries.
Richer countries are willing to increase their contributions as long as major emerging economies such as China and the Gulf states also participate.
Two-thirds of the world cannot afford to cut emissions fast enough to maintain a temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, said Simon Stiehl, the United Nations climate chief.
Without access to cash to reduce carbon, everyone suffers, he says.
“Let’s abandon the idea that climate finance is charity. Ambitious new climate finance targets are in the complete self-interest of all nations, including the largest and richest.” told the delegation.
One of the issues weighing on the heads and fortunes of attendees at this gathering is the price of food and drinks at the conference center.
Our colleague Aygul Mehman, a journalist at BBC Azerbaijan, was charged 41 AZN (Azerbaijani currency) for a modest lunch of soup, bean salad and dry bread rolls. It’s about 18 pounds ($24).
“It’s like they’re taking money out of our pockets,” one participant told BBC climate change editor Justin Rowlatt while queuing for food.
This is a serious problem. Delegates from poorer countries often complain that the costs of these large conferences can add up to thousands of pounds, including flights and hotels.
