Corruption revelations, Trump presidency loom over this year's COP climate conference
'We will be watching very closely on how U.S. negotiators behave,' says head of Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative
Fossil fuels are still looming large over climate talks, even after the world's 2023 agreement that it must transition away from polluting energy sources.
Leaders have arrived at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to negotiate new commitments to limit worsening climate change impacts, and protect the world's most vulnerable.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan has come under attack as the third petrostate to host climate talks in the same number of years.
However, calling the country a petrostate is "not fair," said its president, Ilham Aliyev, in an address to world leaders in Baku on Tuesday.
"It only demonstrates the lack of political culture and knowledge."
In the same speech, he called Azerbaijan's oil "a gift of the God."
In the days before COP29, BBC News exposed senior members of the COP29 team using the conference to arrange potential deals for fossil fuel expansion.
But looming larger is a shadow from overseas: The election of Donald Trump in the U.S., signalling a coming change in climate diplomacy from the world's biggest economy — and biggest oil producer.
Trump's election concerns climate community
While the Biden administration still holds power at these talks, climate experts, activists and diplomats are acutely aware that the incoming U.S. president campaigned on one-liners like "drill, baby, drill" and "frack, frack, frack."
"The Trump administration is going to be very prepared, unlike last time, which means the impact … is going to be far more than the last time," said Harjeet Singh, a director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which advocates for a phase-out of planet-warming fuels.
There are reports that Trump's transition team is already preparing to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, as he did in his first term. But this time, climate advocates fear a bigger impact.
"The Trump administration is going to be very prepared, unlike last time, which means the impact on the global climate policy framework is going to be far more than the last time," said Harjeet Singh, a director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which advocates for a phase-out of planet-warming fuels.
Dozens of climate-focused NGOs and civil society groups have hosted press briefings to react to the former president's re-election. Alden Meyer, a senior analyst at E3G, called the U.S.'s vote a "political earthquake."
All countries at COP formally hold equal power in the UN process, but there's no question about the weight of the United States in multilateral negotiations, and also about the impact of its choices as one of the world's biggest and richest polluters.
"We will be watching very closely on how U.S. negotiators behave at COP29," said Singh. "It looks like it's going to be a lame-duck situation where they can't take any major decision, they will be mostly silent."
However, political events also don't change the fact that action by the rest of the world is critical, Meyer told journalists at a post-election press briefing.
"What's not changed is the impacts," he said. "Climate change is real — it's not affected by political elections and trends.
"The atmosphere doesn't care about what politicians do or say. It respects one thing, which is emissions. It's the laws of physics."
Door opened for China?
John Kerry, as the U.S.'s first special presidential envoy for climate, paved the way for co-operation between the U.S. and China at COP28.
Though those ties may now be lost, experts say China might come out on top when it comes to clean energy gains. It is currently the world's biggest emitter as a country, but it falls 20th on per capita emissions and recorded a drop in emissions earlier this year.
"When the United States throws its toys out of the pram like this, China just goes like, 'Well, too bad, I don't want to play with you, anyway,'" Christiana Figueres, a former Costa Rican diplomat, said Thursday on her climate podcast Outrage + Optimism.
Figueres, a former UNFCCC executive secretary, played a central role in the establishment of the Paris Agreement.
"This opens up an incredible opportunity for China," she said.
The country will step up to fill any gap left by the U.S., she said, in electric vehicle exports and clean energy advances on a global scale.
China's emissions hit an all-time high in 2023, but they may have peaked that year, due to a large-scale deployment of wind and solar power and cutting construction industry emissions. And it's promised to reach net-zero emissions by 2060 — though some say that plan is not enough, considering its role in global pollution.
Many experts believe the global energy transition is far enough along that any resistance from Trump could hurt the American economy.
"Global support for addressing the climate crisis has grown significantly since Donald Trump first took office," Dan Lashof, the U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, wrote in an emailed statement following Trump's election.
UN Secretary General António Guterres echoed this in his remarks to leaders in Baku on Tuesday.
"The clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business and no government can stop it."
All comes down to money
This year's talks have long been seen as the "finance COP," picking up on 2009 commitments in Copenhagen to commit $100 billion US to climate action annually between 2020 and 2025. The countries didn't start meeting that goal until 2022, and it's now seen as far too small a figure to make viable global promises of energy transformation, climate justice and adaptation measures to arm against a turbulent climate.
Negotiators will have several levers to pull — including private finance they can mobilize, as well as taxes and contributions from polluting industries. The amount they agree is viable will be called the New Collective Quantified Goal — bound to be this COP's biggest catchphrase.
"When we calculate the needs for climate finance, that number is in the trillions," said Abreu.
"I think it's really important for people to understand there's two different components of this," climate finance veteran Jennifer Morgan told CBC News earlier this fall. She serves as Germany's state secretary and special envoy for international climate action.
"One is in the world's economy, how do we need to shift the investments that are going into fossil fuels ... into a clean economy? That's the big trillions number."
The other, she said, is the smaller, core amount of public finance contributions that will "help catalyze" those trillions of dollars.
Who gives? Who takes?
Who gives and who takes is expected to take up air in the negotiating rooms, as assignments of developed versus developing countries were given decades ago, before countries like China and Saudi Arabia became economic powerhouses.
Climate finance aims to fund three primary buckets of needs.
The first is adaptation to climate threats — money to protect people from climate change that is already locked in — from storm damage to food shortages to extreme heat.
Second is what are called "loss and damage" payments, owed to countries in the Global South that are drowning and drying up, for irreversible damages not of their own cause.
Finally, the last is mitigation financing. This is money to prevent further warming and includes the business opportunities of energy transition.
"It's a very complex discussion, and it's one where the climate change community and the finance community need to come together," said Morgan.
"But it's fundamental because the poorest around the world are suffering the most from the climate crisis, and this is really about how to support them."
Clarifications
- This story has been updated to clarify that the Paris Agreement's goals are to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2 C, aiming for 1.5 C.Nov 11, 2024 8:28 AM ET
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With files from CBC's Susan Ormiston