‘A disaster for UN climate summit & for global climate action’ – UK Guardian: ‘Cop29 starts in the shadow of Trump’s victory’ – ‘What the re-election of the man who thinks global heating is ‘a hoax’ will mean for the planet’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/11/first-edition-cop29-climate-crisis-donald-trump
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US election | Donald Trump has been declared the winner in Arizona, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover. Trump reportedly spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, telling the Russian ruler not to escalate the conflict and reminding him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”.
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The Trump effect
“A Trump administration is undeniably a disaster for Cop and for global climate action,” says Fiona. “Trump is in the fossil fuel industry’s pocket.” (Earlier this year, the president-elect nakedly proposed that major US oil producers contribute $1bn to his campaign in exchange for repealing climate protection laws).
The pivot away from climate action is already under way. The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump’s transition team has prepared a number of executive orders and proclamations that include scrapping every office in every agency working to end the pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities, and withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement.
Though the global effort to tackle the climate crisis may be hampered by Trump in the White House, some things may not shift dramatically: for instance, the US was never the most generous contributor to climate finance and has often been reluctant to provide substantial funding. An environmentally hostile Trump administration may not make a huge difference on that front.
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“This is the first Cop where finance takes centre stage,” Fiona says. This is because the 2015 Paris agreement requires signatories to establish a new climate finance target by 2025 to help poorer nations manage the impacts of the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This renewed commitment is called the new collective quantified goal, and it aims to replace the previous pledge of $100bn a year made at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. Wealthier nations only recently began to meet these climate finance goals, which has fuelled scepticism and distrust among countries in urgent need of funding. “Climate finance is absolutely essential for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis,” says Fiona. “Without substantial investment, significantly reducing global emissions will be impossible.”
Developed countries are unlikely to propose much more than a tripling of the current $100bn by 2035 – less than a third of what developing nations say they need. Much of this funding is expected to flow through multilateral institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, though these organisations will require substantial reform to effectively support climate finance efforts.