BAKU, Azerbaijan — U.S. local weather envoy John Podesta urged governments to maintain religion within the nation’s promise to fight international warming, saying President-elect Donald Trump can gradual, not cease, the transition from fossil fuels when he returns to workplace in January.
The annual U.N. local weather summit started on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, with many nation delegations involved that Trump’s victory within the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 will hinder progress to restrict planetary warming.
Trump has promised to once more take away the US, the world’s most important historic greenhouse fuel emitter, from worldwide local weather cooperation and maximize the nation’s already record-high fossil gas manufacturing.
“For these of us devoted to local weather motion, final week’s end result in the US is clearly bitterly disappointing,” Podesta mentioned on the summit.
“However what I wish to inform you right this moment is that whereas the US federal authorities, underneath Donald Trump, might put local weather motion on the again burner, the work to comprise local weather change goes to proceed in the US.”
He mentioned the Inflation Discount Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s landmark local weather laws offering billions of {dollars} in subsidies for clear vitality, would proceed to drive investments in photo voltaic, wind and different applied sciences and that U.S. state governments would additionally push emissions cuts via regulation.
“I don’t suppose that any of that’s reversible. Can or not it’s slowed down? Possibly. However the path is obvious,” he mentioned.
Though Trump has promised to rescind the IRA, to take action would require an act of Congress — and that may very well be elusive as a result of help from some Republican lawmakers whose districts profit from IRA-linked investments.
Aside from the election of Trump as president of the world’s greatest economic system, the talks in Baku are vying for consideration with financial considerations and wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
That complicates the summit’s ambition to resolve the precedence agenda merchandise — a deal for as much as $1 trillion in annual local weather finance for growing international locations, changing a goal of $100 billion.
U.N. local weather chief Simon Stiell sought to whip up momentum.
“Let’s dispense with the concept local weather finance is charity,” he mentioned on the Baku stadium. “An bold new local weather finance aim is totally within the self-interest of each nation, together with the biggest and wealthiest.”
This 12 months is on observe to be the most well liked on file. Wealthy and poor international locations alike have been challenged by excessive climate occasions, together with flooding disasters in Africa, coastal Spain and the U.S. state of North Carolina, and drought gripping South America, Mexico and the U.S. West.
However even agreeing on one in every of COP29’s first duties has proved a problem: setting the agenda for negotiations has been delayed for a number of hours.
Nations have been additionally at odds over a proposal from China to incorporate commerce on the COP29 agenda.
Commerce has gained significance as a difficulty for China, already dealing with European Union tariffs, due to Trump’s marketing campaign promise to impose 20% tariffs on all overseas items, and 60% on Chinese language items.
Many additionally fear that U.S. disengagement could lead on different international locations to backpedal on current local weather pledges or cut back future ambitions.
“Individuals shall be saying, effectively, the U.S. is the second-biggest emitter. It’s the largest economic system on the earth … In the event that they don’t set themselves an bold goal, why would we?” Marc Vanheukelen, the E.U.’s local weather ambassador from 2019 to 2023, advised Reuters.
Talks host Azerbaijan has lobbied governments to speed up their transfer to scrub vitality whereas touting fuel as a transition gas.
Its oil and fuel revenues accounted for 35% of its economic system in 2023, down from 50% two years earlier. The federal government says these revenues will decline to 22% by 2028.
President Ilham Aliyev has referred to as Azerbaijan’s fossil-fuel bounty “a present of God,” and Baku has proposed making a Local weather Finance Motion Fund to voluntarily accumulate as much as $1 billion from extractive firms throughout 10 international locations, together with Azerbaijan.
