Climate fight 'bigger than one election', says Biden’s top envoy

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BAKU — The US will still continue fighting climate change and curbing its emissions of planet-warming gases despite the election of Donald Trump, the US special envoy told the COP29 conference on its opening day.

John Podesta, a Biden administration appointee, labeled the incoming president a climate denier and said he would dismantle environmental safeguards.

But in a sign of some early progress, country representatives struck an agreement over a long-standing sticking point in international climate negotiations.

The move could allow richer countries to make up for some of their atmosphere-heating pollution by investing in clean energy projects or forests in developing nations.

The election of Trump last week was a worrying development for action on climate change, at least in the short term experts have said.

“He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement," Podesta said.

“That is what he has said, and we should believe him."

The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries agree to try to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C.

Leaders from nearly 100 countries will address the meeting in the coming days.

COP29 has been billed as an opportunity to solve the crucial issue of getting money to poorer countries to help them deal with the impacts of climate change and help them prepare for it.

But expectations for what the summit can achieve have been lowered by a Trump victory that makes Biden administration negotiators from one of the world's largest carbon emitters a lame duck in this process and unable to really promise much.

However, the election wasn’t the end of the struggle, Podesta told reporters.

He believed that as a result of the policies put in place by President Biden and with the support of states and cities, US emissions would continue their downward trajectory, albeit at a slower pace.

“The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle and one country. This fight is bigger still because we are living through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country of the world."

As evidence that countries will continue to make progress on the issue, in the absence of leadership from the US, delegates signed off the final and most controversial component of the Paris climate agreement late on the first night of COP29.

It means that a global 'carbon market' can now be established, allowing richer nations to pay for projects in developing nations that reduce emissions and use this to meet their climate obligations. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas released by human activities.

This proposal is very attractive to richer countries in Europe as it is far cheaper to pay for a wind farm somewhere in Africa, for example, than to subsidize heat pumps at home.

Agreed over this had proved very tricky. There have been concerns about fraud and whether the carbon removals are real and permanent.

And despite it being passed some of those concerns remain, but supporters say it could unleash a flurry of market activity, worth up to $250bn a year flowing from rich to poor.

As a reminder to negotiators of the urgency of the situation there was fresh scientific gloom. The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report released to coincide with the conference's start, that 2024 is on track to be the world’s warmest year on record.

Its latest State of the Climate report also finds that our oceans are heating up rapidly and glacier melt is accelerating.

“We are on the road to ruin,” Mukhtar Babyaev, president of COP29 said in his opening remarks.

He went on to list examples of climate impacts now around the world, saying “these are not future problems” as rising temperatures were doing huge damage around the world right now.

The mood of delegates wasn't improved by the scale of the main task facing negotiators here.

Amid energy and economic crises, developed countries are expected to find billions extra in climate finance for developing nations.

Richer countries are willing to increase their contributions, as long as major emerging economies like China and the Gulf states also chip in.

UN climate change chief Simon Stiell said that two-thirds of the world cannot afford to cut emissions quickly enough to keep the 1.5C temperature threshold alive.

If they didn’t get the cash to cut their carbon, everyone would suffer, he said.

“Let's dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity. An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest,” he told delegates.

One issue exercising the minds and pockets of attendees at this gathering is the price of food and drink in the conference center

Aygul Mehman, a journalist with the BBC’s Azerbaijani service, was charged 41 AZN (the Azerbaijani currency) for her modest lunch of soup, a bean salad and a dry roll. That’s about £18 ($24).

"It’s like they are taking money from our pockets," one delegate told BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt as he was queuing up for food.

This is a serious issue. Delegates from poorer nations often complain about how much these big conferences cost them when you add in flights and hotels and the total can come to many thousands of pounds. — BBC