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Cop29
Trump ‘dominating conversation’ at COP29
Tensions are high at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.
France’s top climate official is shunning the UN climate talks after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev criticized its handling of deadly protests in New Caledonia, a French overseas territory, earlier this year. Aliyev also characterized France’s Pacific island territories as “colonies.”
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election is also at the forefront of discussions at the summit.
“Trump’s win is a dominating conversation. However, it’s not the same mood as in 2016, when people were more in shock and processing,” says Shari Friedman, Eurasia Group’s managing director for climate and sustainability
“This time, the world has gone through this before” and “plans to move forward, as they did last time,” adds Friedman.
The president-elect has repeatedly suggested that climate change is a hoax, and his pick to oversee the EPA, Lee Zeldin, has vowed to “roll back regulations” he said are causing US businesses to “struggle.”
Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change — a global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — during his first term. The Biden administration rejoined the accord, but Trump has pledged to pull the US out once again. Interestingly, Israel, one of Trump’s top allies on the global stage, at COP29 cautioned the president-elect against yanking the US from the Paris Agreement.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s delegation was abruptly ordered to leave the two-week summit on Wednesday. This comes amid reports that Argentina’s Trump-friendly president, Javier Milei, is considering withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Milei was set to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday.
We’ll be watching to see how Trump’s win continues to shape conversations at COP29 in the days ahead — and how it impacts US climate policy in the months and years to come.
Climate activists project a message onto the Embassy of Azerbaijan ahead of COP29 climate talks, in London, on Nov. 7, 2024.
Viewpoint: Trump to overshadow UN climate conference
Donald Trump’s election victory last week will loom large in the minds of delegates at this year’s UN climate conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. The government, corporate, and civil society representatives meeting from Nov. 11-22 will be forced to reckon with the return of the climate skeptic who withdrew the world’s largest economy from the Paris Agreement during his first administration. We asked Eurasia Group expert Herbert Crowther how the prospect of Trump’s return to office will affect COP29 and UN efforts to mitigate climate change more broadly.
What has Trump’s attitude generally been toward climate concerns?
Trump was largely dismissive of climate change as a pertinent economic or political issue during his first administration. Though not prominently on display during the recent US election cycle, his attitude toward the issue has not changed since his first term – which will likely become more evident when he takes office next year. He will almost certainly move to scale back programs to develop new low-carbon technologies championed by President Joe Biden’s administration, including those created by the Inflation Reduction Act. That will put more burden on state and local-level officials, who helped fill the climate policy void during Trump’s first term and kept the US energy transition moving forward.
How will Trump’s election affect the mood at COP29?
Trump’s election will significantly dampen the atmosphere at COP29, both in terms of negotiating priorities and broader sentiment among negotiators. Trump’s election will make it harder to reach a consensus on ambitious new targets, particularly for climate finance. Delegates will not regard any commitments made by the outgoing Biden administration as very credible; consequently, other governments will be more reticent to make ambitious promises of their own. In terms of broader sentiment, many negotiators will already begin turning their attention to where the COP process will go next year when Trump takes office and likely withdraws the US from the Paris Agreement again (Biden’s administration rejoined the agreement). The COP process has been largely focused on advancing the key Paris aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Given this context, what COP29 objectives are likely still feasible?
One area where negotiations can still likely move forward involves the so-called Article 6 rules for the sale and purchase of carbon emissions credits. Talks around Article 6 have resumed this year after their very public breakdown last year at COP28. They will not be dramatically altered by the US election result and are still trending in a positive direction. For the issue of carbon market rules, the US has stuck to a negotiating position that is more aligned with that of emerging markets, meaning it is not a hurdle to reaching a deal in Baku.
What objectives are not?
Negotiations on assistance from developed economies to emerging market economies to finance climate change mitigation efforts is likely an area that will suffer the most at COP29 as a result of Trump’s victory. There was already limited room for consensus on a new umbrella target for global climate finance – the so-called New Collective Quantified Goal, or NCQG. Trump’s election will likely move the conversation even further away from targets like the $1 trillion in annual climate finance deployment that many emerging markets had been pushing for. Another important topic that will be affected by Trump’s election is the next round of country-level climate plans – the so-called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs. By next February, all parties to the Paris Agreement must submit new plans covering their emissions goals until 2035. With Trump’s election and a worsening outlook for agreements at Baku, more of these plans are likely to present cautious targets, which bodes poorly for medium-term efforts to combat climate change.
Where does the COP process go from here?
A second Trump administration will almost certainly withdraw from the Paris Agreement again. Though the COP process already survived one US absence during Trump’s first term, the global climate policy environment faces greater challenges today. The timeframe to meet targets is shorter, and tensions have intensified between industrialized and emerging markets over who bears the most blame for climate change and should pay for mitigation efforts. Many US states, corporations, and financial institutions will remain relevant players at COP and will continue to push the US energy transition forward, but they will not be able to compensate fully for the lack of federal policies. Meanwhile, the US absence will place greater pressure on China and the EU to assume more of a leadership role in COP and shoulder greater financing commitments. This year’s conference will provide some early signals about that, but 2025 — especially the buildup to COP30 — will be the real litmus test.
Edited by Jonathan House, senior editor, Eurasia Group
United States President Joe Biden makes a statement on the general election.
Hard Numbers: Biden addresses Trump’s win, Earth keeps getting hotter, Starvation imminent in Myanmar, US forgives Somalia’s debt
74: In the wake of Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential election, President Joe Biden addressed the country from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, 74 days before he’s due to hand the keys back to Donald Trump.In his speech, Biden stressed that he would ensure a peaceful transition of power, called for unity, and said that he hoped the result would restore Americans’ faith in election integrity.
2.5: For the second year in a row, scientists at the European Climate Agency report that Earth is the hottest it’s ever been, breaking 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to preindustrial averages. While factors like El Niño and volcanic eruptions are playing a part, they say the data clearly shows an unprecedented sequence of record-breaking temperatures that would be impossible without the levels of greenhouse gasses being emitted by humans.
2 million: Two million people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, are on the brink of starvation because of trade blockades and violence that have led to a “total economic collapse,” according to the UN. People in the region are seeing their incomes plummet because of the violence while food prices are soaring due to junta-enforced trade blockades, creating a deadly cycle of conflict and economic crisis.
1.14 billion: The US has decided to cancel $1.14 billion of Somalia’s outstanding loans, a quarter of the country’s outstanding debt. The government has suffered under the crippling bill, borrowed under the era of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, that went unpaid during the three decades of civil war that followed its collapse in the early 1990s. The forgiveness was part of an IMF and World Bank program that aims to relieve the poorest countries of unsustainable debt levels.
Moderator Rachel Ramirez, CNN; Dennis Francis, permanent representative of Trinidad and Tobago, president of the General Assembly for the 78th session; and Dr. Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, director of the Ocean Physics program at NASA
UN Secretary-General: Rising seas mean rising “misery”
UNITED NATIONS – For the first time, the United Nations convened a high-level meeting to address the global threats posed by rising sea levels. Secretary-General António Guterres warned attendees on Wednesday that “rising seas mean a rising tide of misery.”
Nations define themselves by their territorial boundaries. But those participating in the high-level meeting were seeking to update international law to reflect the reality of a warming planet and sinking coastlines. The Permanent Representative of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations Dennis Francis described the mood as “one of consensus and solidarity.”
Astudy cited by the IPCC — the UN’s top climate change body — projected that the island nations of Tuvalu, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Kiribati may become completely uninhabitable by 2100. If that projection comes true, around 600,000 citizens will become climate refugees.
Creating a new global consensus is essential to address this crisis, but how does one convince people who live far inland, or climate change deniers, to care about this issue?
Francis described sea level rise as a “hydra” affecting “everything,” far more than just coastal and island communities. Displaced persons, food insecurity, and groundwater salinity are likely to affect much more than the roughly one billion who currently live in low-lying coastal areas.
In an interview with GZERO Media, Dr. Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer — who directs the NASA Sea Level Change Team — offered a simple answer: by using data for “clarity.” Even if someone doesn’t believe they’re sick, a fever doesn’t lie, she told us.
NASA released thisinteractive tool using previous tide gauges to predict future sea level rise scenarios through 2150. Spoiler: It’s not good.Graphic Truth: Hurricanes US and Canada
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is shaping up to be exceptionally active, with forecasts predicting 17-25 named storms, including 8-13 hurricanes and 4-7 major hurricanes. This surge in activity is driven by unusually warm Atlantic waters and El Niño conditions.
Hurricanes are becoming increasingly expensive for the US, with recent storms like Ian in 2022 and Ida in 2021 causing over $113 billion and $75 billion in damages, respectively. This trend is exacerbated by climate change, which intensifies storms and raises sea levels, amplifying coastal flooding.
As the Arctic melts, geopolitics heats up
As climate change warms the planet, the Arctic Circle ice cap will continue to melt. Beyond the ecological implications, a melting Arctic will open up new opportunities for resource extraction, trade routes, and….military operations. Few nations are more keenly aware of this than the United States and its adversaries, Russia, China, and North Korea.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits with Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy to talk about how the United States will ensure that its economic and geopolitical interests continue to be met as the Arctic melts. And the threat goes beyond Russia. “China's flexing its muscles in the Bering Strait in the Arctic,” Dunleavy tells Bremmer. “ That's changing as well. So I think as a result of that, you're going to see, I hope to see a different approach by Washington involving our armed forces in Alaska.
Such ramp-ups cannot come a moment too soon, Dunleavy says, since the United States is outmatched when it comes to its presence of the crucial icebreaker ships needed to navigate the arctic passages. “I think what's going to happen is you're probably going to see more discussions on increased navy activity in Alaska,” Dunleavy tells Bremmer, “as well as the need for more icebreakers to joint patrols with our Canadian friends to the East.”
Watch full episode: As the Arctic melts, Alaska's importance grows
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What the France and UK elections mean for the West
Major Western democracies like France, the UK, Canada, and the US are on the verge of sweeping political change, but how will upcoming elections impact our collective ability to deal with the world’s biggest challenges? How will Western allies approach issues like climate change, the AI revolution, and cyber defense in an increasingly fractured world? Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada and current UN Special Envoy on Climate Action & Finance, joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World for a hard look at three of America’s closest allies: France, Britain, and Canada.
“We're operating in a world where security is paramount. You need resilience,” Carney tells Bremmer, “You need to look to those countries where you have common values and you need to reinforce them.”
Carney and Bremmer also delve into the strategic importance of the US-Canada relationship and how our neighbor to the north can be a reliable, strategic partner in many critical areas, including national security and climate transition. He warns Canadians and Americans shouldn’t “hit the snooze button” when it comes to strengthening US-Canada ties and stresses that Canada can be a critical partner in providing lean energy, crucial minerals, and AI expertise. As for Carney’s rumored political future as a potential Liberal Party leader? Well, you’ll just have to watch the interview to find out.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Ian Explains: How political chaos in the UK, France, & Canada impacts the US
Big political changes are coming in Western democracies, is the US ready to deal with the fallout? Voters in the United Kingdom and France will head to the polls in the coming weeks after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron called snap national elections. Both political gambles could have a huge impact on everything from the West’s collective ability to deal with climate change to the AI revolution and countering China’s growing influence.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the tumultuous landscapes of French and British politics right now, with an eye on upcoming elections in Canada and the United States.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is almost guaranteed to lose control of the government. In France, the far-right National Rally Party is highly favored to win the most seats in the National Assembly. A similar story is playing out in Canada, setting the stage for a potentially brutal electoral defeat next year.
So why should Americans care about all this political chaos so far from home? Watch Ian Explains for more on what’s at stake with so many big elections on the horizon.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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