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This year has been masterclass in human destruction, UN chief tells Cop29

This year has been “a masterclass in human destruction”, the UN
secretary general has said as he reflected on extreme weather and record
temperatures around the world fuelled by climate breakdown.

António Guterres painted a stark portrait of the consequences of climate breakdown
that had arisen in recent months. “Families running for their lives
before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in
insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities and tearing down
infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops,”
he said.

“All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by
human-made climate change.” Guterres was addressing scores of world
leaders and high-ranking government officials from nearly 200 countries
gathered in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 UN climate summit. Over a fortnight of
talks, nations will try to find ways to raise the vast sums of money needed
to tackle the climate crisis. Developing countries want guarantees of $1tn
a year in funds by 2035 to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt
to the impacts of extreme weather.

Guardian 12th Nov 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/12/year-masterclass-in-human-destruction-un-chief-tells-cop29

November 14, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

TODAY. The International Atomic Energy Agency in full force with its lying propaganda, at COP 29, with at least 20 ‘Events”.

COP 29 will be a flop anyway – so I suppose that is some kind of twisted comfort – in that very few will trust the outcome of this hijacked UN Climate Summit

From IAEA website’s disgusting propaganda:

“ a rich programme of IAEA and partner events to showcase nuclear science and technology solutions for climate change “

“The IAEA is organizing a series of events on four thematic areas: energy, food, the ocean and water. “

“an informed debate on the tools and benefits offered by nuclear technology”

Hijacked by all the polluting industries, but the biggest liar of the lot is the IAEA – with their full knowledge that nuclear does nothing to fight climate change. And in fact – climate change effects will kill the nuclear industry,

November 13, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes, climate change | Leave a comment

Cop29 could change the financial climate for the world’s wealthy polluters

Jillian Ambrose, Energy correspondent. Guardian 10th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/10/cop29-summit-financial-agenda-wealthy-polluters

This week’s summit will focus on paying for the costs of global heating – and much more money is needed.

About 50,000 government officials, policymakers, investors and campaigners will gather in Azerbaijan this week in the hope of answering a trillion-dollar question: how much money should go each year to helping developing countries cope with climate-related costs?

The aim of the UN’s Cop29 climate talks in Baku, which is being called the “climate finance Cop”, is to establish a new annual climate financing target to replace the current $100bn pledge, set in 2009, which expires at the end of this year. There is one clear consensus already: the existing climate finance available to developing countries is nowhere near enough to withstand worsening climate impacts. The ambition is too low, and in 15 years the annual target has been met in full only once, in 2022.

Campaigners have called for the governments of wealthier countries to contribute to a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance. Forecasts of how much this will be vary but are typically $500bn to $1tn a year, or less than 1% of global GDP. Some estimates are as high as $5tn.

“Setting a more ambitious goal will be essential to helping vulnerable countries adopt clean energy and other low-carbon solutions and build resilience to worsening climate impacts,” said the World Resources Institute.

But who should pay? To date, the financial contributions that enable developing countries to pursue low-carbon growth and greater climate resilience have come from countries defined by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as “high income”. The list includes the UK, US, Japan and Germany. But in the 30 years since it was created, countries including China, India and South Korea have dramatically increased their economic might – and their carbon emissions.

It is likely that the talks will include calls to expand the list of countries contributing to climate financing. But even then the sums involved are too large for government spending ­budgets alone, according to delegates from many wealthy nations.

Instead, the talks aim to reform global climate lending to encourage more private capital to play a part. In an open letter last month, Stephanie Pfeifer, the head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, said many global investors were beginning to explore ways to unlock and mobilise capital.

“An ambitious finance goal that includes private capital can encourage greater ambition in developing countries’ targets [for helping to limit global warming] by building confidence in accessible funding for both mitigation and adaptation, with the latter being historically underfunded,” she said.

This approach is not without its critics. Climate and humanitarian NGOs have warned that loans, even on favourable term, place the financial burden of the climate crisis on already indebted developing nations, which bear the lowest responsibility for the climate crisis but face the greatest risks. These groups have called for polluting companies to pay their fair share.

“Climate finance is not about charity or generosity but responsibility and justice,” according to Debbie Hillier, a policy lead at the humanitarian NGO Mercy Corps. “It is based firmly on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities – those who contributed most to the climate crisis must bear the brunt of the solution.”

To this end, a new Climate Finance Action Fund (CFAF) will be under consideration. It aims to draw on voluntary contributions from fossil-fuel-producing countries and companies to support developing nations’ climate projects.

For polluters who would rather not pay, campaigners are calling for climate taxes. Billionaires and fossil fuel giants are in the crosshairs of environmental NGO 350.org, which plans to hold them accountable for their outsize impact on the planet in a new campaign. The group argues that funds generated through taxing the ultra-rich could be used both for domestic policies and programmes to lower carbon emissions, and for international climate finance to ensure “those most responsible for the climate crisis contribute to its solution”.

This approach is likely to prove popular with the public. Oxfam is scheduled to publish a report suggesting that the majority of the British public support higher taxes on private jets and superyachts to help tackle the climate crisis.

The survey, by YouGov, is also expected to show strong public support for increasing taxes on the wealthiest UK individuals to fund action, and hiking taxes on businesses in sectors that produce the most emissions.

The key to whatever form climate finance takes will be accountability – a meaningful climate finance target will mean nothing if the annual goal is never reached.

November 13, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

A ‘Cop of peace’? How can authoritarian, human rights-trashing Azerbaijan possibly host that?

The ‘theme’ chosen for Cop29 must be some kind of dark joke. This summit, like those before it, is a mere act of greenwashing.

Greta Thunberg, Guardian, 11 Nov 24

During rapidly escalating climate and humanitarian crises, another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights is hosting Cop29 – the UN’s latest annual climate summit that starts today and is being held after the re-election of a climate-denier US president.

Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts – the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – to continue violating human rights.

Genocides, ecocides, famines, wars, colonialism, rising inequalities and an escalating climate collapse are all interconnected crises that reinforce each other and lead to unimaginable suffering. While humanitarian crises are unfolding in Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Balochistan, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, and many, many other places, humanity is also breaching the 1.5C greenhouse gas emissions limit, with no signs of real reductions in sight. Instead, the opposite is taking place – last year, global emissions reached an all-time high. Heat records have been shattered, and this year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year ever recorded, with unprecedented extreme weather events pushing the planet further into uncharted territory. The destabilisation of the biosphere and the natural ecosystems we depend on to survive is leading to untold human suffering and further accelerating the mass extinction of flora and fauna.

Azerbaijan’s entire economy is built on fossil fuels, with the state-owned oil company Socar’s oil and gas exports accounting for close to 90% of the country’s exports. Despite what it might claim, Azerbaijan has no ambition to take climate action. It is planning to expand fossil fuel production, which is completely incompatible with the 1.5C limit and the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change.

Many attenders of this year’s Cop are scared to criticise the Azerbaijan government. Human Rights Watch recently published a statement explaining how it couldn’t be certain that attenders’ rights to peacefully protest would be guaranteed. In addition, Azerbaijan land and sea borders will remain closed during Cop29, making it only possible to travel in and out of the country by air, which causes pollution and which many Azerbaijan citizens can’t afford. The reason given for closing borders at all Cops since the start of the Covid pandemic is to maintain “national security”, but I’ve heard many Azerbaijanis describe the situation as being “kept in a prison”.

The Azerbaijan regime is guilty of ethnic cleansing, humanitarian blockades and war crimes, as well as repressing its own population and cracking down on the country’s civil society. The independent watchdog Freedom House ranks the country as the least democratic state in Europe, with the regime actively targeting journalists, independent media outlets, political and civic activists, and human rights defenders. Azerbaijan also accounts for about 40% of Israel’s annual oil imports, thus fuelling the Israeli war machine and being complicit in the genocide in Palestine and Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon. The Azerbaijan-Israel ties are mutually beneficial as the majority of weapons used by Azerbaijan during the second Nagorno-Karabakh war and likely those used in the September 2023 military operation into the Karabakh region were imported from Israel.

The “Cop of peace” is one theme chosen for this year’s climate conference by the host, which wants to encourage states to observe a “Cop truce”. It is gut-wrenching, to say the least, to talk of global peace after the terrible human rights violations committed by Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime against ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh region. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is planning to greenwash its crimes against Armenians by building a “Green Energy Zone” on territories where the population has been ethnically cleansed.

How did this country get to host the climate summit? It was eastern Europe’s turn. But Russia vetoed EU member states, so the options were either Armenia or Azerbaijan. Armenia lifted its veto against Azerbaijan and supported its bid in exchange for a release of prisoners, although a large number of Armenian political prisoners are still being held. Last year, the regime critic Gubad Ibadoghlu was imprisoned after criticising Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel industry. Other political prisoners include peace activist Bahruz Samadov, ethnic minority researcher Iqbal Abilov, political activists Akif Gurbanov and Ruslan Izzatli and journalists.

The climate crisis is just as much about protecting human rights as it is about protecting the climate and biodiversity. You cannot claim to care about climate justice if you ignore the sufferings of oppressed and colonised people today. We cannot pick and choose whose human rights to care for, and who to leave behind. Climate justice means justice, safety and freedom for everyone.

During Cop29, the picture of Azerbaijan reported by the media will be a whitewashed and greenwashed version that the regime is desperate to portray. But make no mistake – it is a repressive state accused of ethnic cleansing.

We need immediate sanctions targeted against the regime and a halt to the import of Azerbaijani fossil fuels. Diplomatic pressure must also be put on the regime to release its Armenian hostages and all political prisoners – and ensure the right to a safe return for Armenians.

  • Greta Thunberg is a Swedish activist and international climate crisis campaigner

November 11, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, climate change | Leave a comment

Climate talks to open in shadow of Trump victory

 World leaders are set to arrive at a big annual UN climate meeting hoping
to rein in rising global temperatures, which are making deadly events like
the recent floods in Spain far worse.

A key aim at this year’s meeting in
Azerbaijan is agreeing on how to get more cash to poorer countries to help
them curb their planet-warming gases and to help them cope with the growing
impacts of climate change.

But the US election victory of Donald Trump – a
known climate sceptic – as well as wars and cost of living crises are
proving a distraction, and some important leaders are not attending. Hosts
Azerbaijan are also under intense scrutiny over their human rights record,
as well as accusations they are using the meeting to line up fossil fuel
deals.

 BBC 8th Nov 2024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k0zd2z53xo

November 11, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Trump planning to withdraw from Paris climate agreement

Donald Trump is preparing to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement
when he returns to office in January. The president-elect’s team has
already prepared an executive order that would see the US leave the
international treaty, which commits countries to cutting their greenhouse
gas emissions.

More executive orders have been prepared for Mr Trump to
sign when he re-enters the White House that would shrink the size of
national monuments to allow more drilling and mining, The New York Times
reports. It is one of the first signs of how Mr Trump plans to undo the
legacy of Joe Biden, who has frequently touted his administration’s green
credentials and spent billions of dollars on renewable energy projects.

 Telegraph 9th Nov 2024,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/09/trump-planning-withdraw-from-paris-climate-agreement/

November 11, 2024 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Donald Trump can’t stop global climate action. If we stick together, it’s the US that will lose out

Bill Hare,  Guardian 7th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/donald-trump-cant-stop-global-climate-action-if-we-stick-together-its-the-us-that-will-lose-out

How damaging this presidency is to the planet depends very much on how other countries react. There’s no time to waste.


Donald Trump can’t stop global climate action. If we stick together, it’s the US that will lose out

Bill Hare

How damaging this presidency is to the planet depends very much on how other countries react. There’s no time to waste

Thu 7 Nov 2024 09.34 AEDTShare209

Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House is a major setback for climate action but ultimately it’s the US that could end up losing out, as the rest of the world will move forward without it.

The US is the world’s biggest economy and its second biggest emitter. Positive US engagement on climate has been crucial to landmark leaps forward, like getting the Paris agreement over the line, and just last year committing to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The US missing in action in the latter half of this critical decade for climate action is nobody’s idea of a good outcome.

President-elect Trump has promised to leave the Paris agreement and reports have emerged that he could be thinking of pulling out of the underlying United Nations framework treaty on climate change. But we’ve been here before and the truth is that a second Trump presidency can’t stop climate action, just like his denial of human-induced climate change won’t spare the US from its impacts.

The energy transition is now well under way. The economics of renewable technologies are so attractive that they have become an energy juggernaut. Since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015, global investment in clean energy has increased by 60%.

Nearly US$2tn a year is now invested in clean energy projects, almost double that spent on new oil, gas and coal supply. Before the pandemic, this ratio was closer to 1:1. The US added 560 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2023. That’s about six times the size of Australia’s entire electricity capacity, added in just one year.

Domestically, Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has set wheels in motion for climate investment that will be hard, and politically unpopular, to undo. Famously, no Republicans voted for the legislation but red states have been the main beneficiaries of the money, projects and jobs it has created. House Republicans have even pushed back against their peers to protect some of the act’s clean energy tax credits.

Climate impacts are accelerating in pace and scale that is untenable to ignore. Hurricanes Helene and Milton, supercharged by climate change, are expected to cost more than US$50bn. Fires in California, heatwaves in the sunbelt states, and flooding in the US South are wreaking huge damage on Americans. Last year a poll showed a majority of them feel that climate change is already causing serious effects.

None of this stops the day Trump re-enters the White House.


Internationally, we’ve been in this position before. In 2001 George W Bush quit the 1997 Kyoto deal. Last time Trump was in power, he left the Paris agreement, albeit for a short time. I don’t want to downplay the impacts of Trump, or the Project 2025 agenda to which he has been linked, but climate action didn’t stop then and it will not stop now.

Other players, notably China, are increasingly moving into a leadership position on the issue, because of the strategic policy and economic interests it advances. The European Union is moving ahead with its green economic development agenda despite a rightward shift in the balance of power across the EU27 – with action on the climate emergency driving the economic development needed for this region of 350 million people.

The US, if Trump does enact the changes he has campaigned on, will find itself falling behind on new technologies and markets.

How damaging the second Trump presidency is to climate action depends very much on how other countries react. If many follow Trump in either rolling back – or slowing down – their action, the damage will be severe, long-lasting and difficult to overcome.

On the other hand, if countries stick together and, as they should, deepen their commitments aligning with the Paris agreement’s 1.5C limit, the damage will be significant but not severe.

In Australia we’re on the frontline of climate impacts and damages. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered enormous damage with increasingly frequent bleaching. Forests in Western Australia have experienced browning and dieback at an unprecedented scale due to extended drought and heat.

We know that the climate crisis and its impacts on our neighbours is one of our most serious security threats – although it’s not one that our government wants to particularly talk about.

The Australian government, especially given its intention to host COP31, must play a strong diplomatic role to help ensure the fallout from the second Trump presidency is limited, and that international domestic action everywhere else continues to move ahead.



This requires leadership. The government must step up and work with other like-minded countries to bring together a coalition prepared to move forward on climate. And it needs to move forward itself.

There is no time to waste on this. COP29 starts in Baku in a few days and real leadership will be needed urgently to maintain the momentum needed to get agreement on the difficult issues that need to be solved to maintain action globally.

 Bill Hare, a physicist and climate scientist, is the chief executive of Climate Analytics

November 10, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, climate change | Leave a comment

This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space programme


 Guardian 7th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/07/this-year-virtually-certain-to-be-hottest-on-record-finds-eu-space-programme

 It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on
record, the European Union’s space programme has found. The prognosis
comes the week before diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day
after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical polluter of
planet-heating gas, chose to make Donald Trump president.

Trump has described climate change as a “hoax” and promised to roll back policies
to clean up the economy. The report found 2024 is likely to be the first
year more than 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, a
level of warming that has alarmed scientists. “This marks a new milestone
in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise
ambition for the upcoming climate change conference,” said Dr Samantha
Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

November 10, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

10 reasons why Donald Trump can’t derail global climate action, especially in Australia

Wesley Morgan & Ben Newell, Nov 8, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/10-reasons-why-donald-trump-cant-derail-global-climate-action/

If you care about saving Earth from catastrophe, you might be feeling a little down about the re-election of Donald Trump as United States president. Undeniably, his return to the White House is a real setback for climate action.

Trump is a climate change denier who has promised to increase fossil fuel production and withdraw the US from the Paris climate deal, among other worrying pledges.

But beyond Trump and his circle, there remains deep concern about climate change, especially among younger people. Support for climate policy remains high in the US and around the world. And studies based on data from 60,000 people in more than 60 countries suggest individuals’ concern about climate change is widely underestimated.

So now is a good time to remember that efforts to tackle the climate crisis – both in Australia and globally – are much bigger than one man. Here are ten reasons to remain hopeful.

1. The global clean energy transition can’t be halted

The global shift to clean energy is accelerating, and Trump can’t stop it. Investment in clean energy has overtaken fossil fuels, and will be nearly double investment in coal, oil and gas in 2024. This is a historic mega-trend and will continue with or without American leadership.

2. Clean energy momentum is likely to continue in the US

Much of the Biden-era spending on clean energy industries went to Republican states and Congressional districts. New factories for batteries and electric vehicles will still go ahead under the Trump administration. After all, entrepreneur Elon Musk – who is expected to join the Trump administration – makes electric vehicles.

Some of Trump’s financial backers are receiving subsidies for clean energy manufacturing and 18 Republican Congress members have gone on record to oppose cuts to clean energy tax credits.

3. The US still wants to beat China

There is bipartisan concern in Washington about the US losing a technological edge to Beijing. China currently dominates global production of electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels. So internal pressure in the US to counter China’s manufacturing might will continue.

4. The federal government is not everything in the US

When Trump was last in power, he withdrew the US from some climate commitments, such as the Paris Agreement. But many state and local governments powered ahead with climate policy, and that will happen this time around, too. For example, California – the world’s fifth largest economy – plans to eliminate its greenhouse gas footprint by 2045. Even Texas, a Republican heartland, is leading a shift toward wind and solar power.

5. The US climate movement will be more energised than ever

During Trump’s first presidency, the US climate movement developed policy proposals for a “Green New Deal”. Many of these proposals were later implemented by the Biden administration. Initial reactions to Trump’s re-election suggest we can expect similar policy advocacy this time around.

6. Global climate cooperation is bigger than Trump

If Trump makes good on his promise to leave the Paris Agreement (again), he will only be leaving the room where the world’s future is being shaped. The US has walked away from global climate agreements before – for example, refusing to join the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. But other nations rallied for global action, and will do so again.

7. The rules-based global order will remain

When a nation walks away from rules that have been agreed after decades of negotiation, responsible countries must work together to bolster global cooperation. This applies to trade and security – and climate is no different.

As our Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently explained, Australia, as a middle power on the world stage, wants:

a world where disputes are resolved by engagement, negotiation and by reference to rules [and] norms […] We don’t want a world in which disputes are resolved by power alone.

8. Australian diplomacy matters

Australia is seeking to co-host the United Nations climate talks with Pacific island countries in 2026, and is emerging as the favourite. Hosting the conference, known as COP31, would be a chance for Australia to help broker a new era of international climate action, even if the US opts out under Trump.

Hosting the talks would also help cement Australia’s place in the Pacific and assist our Pacific neighbours to deal with the climate threat.

9. Australia’s clean energy shift is accelerating

About 40% of Australia’s main national electricity grid is powered by renewables and this is set to rise to 80% by 2030. Some states are surging ahead – for example, South Australia is aiming for 100% renewables by 2027.

Australians love clean energy at home, too. One in three households have rooftop solar installed, making us a world-leader in the technology’s uptake. Trump’s occupation of the Oval Office cannot stop this momentum.

10. Trump cannot change the science of climate change

The science is clear – burning coal, oil and gas fuels climate change and increases the risk of disasters that are harming communities right now. In Australia, we need look no further than the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 and unprecedented Lismore floods in 2022.

And the damage is happening across the globe. In October, twin hurricanes in the US – made stronger by the warming ocean – left a damage bill of more than US$100 billion. And hundreds of people died when a year’s worth of rain fell in one day in Spain last month.

On gloomy days – like, say, the election of a climate denier to the White House – it might feel humanity won’t rise to Earth’s biggest existential challenge. But there are many reasons for hope. The vast majority of us support policies to tackle climate change, and in many cases, the momentum is virtually unstoppable.

Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney and Ben Newell, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

November 10, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, climate change | Leave a comment

TODAY . COP 29 global climate summit – already a dead duck.

In the midst of all the brouhaha about the election of a deranged narcissist to be in charge of America, we must remember what is really the biggest danger to our Earth – climate change – global heating

 The 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), will take place from November 11 to 22 in 2024 at Baku Stadium, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024.

There will be good people there, and I’m not rubbishing their work.

Still, at the top level, corporate greed will be running the show.

FIRST. to start with, the host, Azerbaijan- is a massive exporter of oil and gas, – global fossil fuel lobbyists will be welcome there and money will be splurged on an attractive greenwash of the dirtiest industries

SECOND. As if having the fossil fuel industries in control was not bad enough, we have their close mate, the nuclear industry, jumping on the bandwagon, with its lucrative claims about “solving” the climate crisis .

THIRD. Politics international. Ursula von der Leyen, the big cheese of the European Commission, will not be attending. Nor will France’s Emmanuel Macron, the current US president, Joe Biden, and the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, . The leaders of China, South Africa, Japan and Australia are expected to miss the talks as well. This sends a clear message that climate change is not a concern for top world leaders

THIRD. American politics now. I’m not a fan of Joe Biden, but the Biden administration deserves credit . The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has been successful in promoting truly clean energy (even though it does contain sops to the nuclear industry). Many Americans have now become painfully aware of the extreme effects of global heating, and the USA’s clean energy success will be hard for the climate deniers to unravel. But still, in January, Trump’s climate denial administration will take over, and this fact does cast a damper on COP29.

We know that there are millions of people who are dedicated to the cause of a clean world, and of stopping global heating. We are up against the globally amoral corporateaucracy .

November 9, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes, climate change | Leave a comment

Von der Leyen’s Cop29 absence sends ‘fatal signal’, say watchers

MEPs express concern for EU climate leadership as commission head confirms she will miss Baku summit

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels, Guardian 6th Nov 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/06/von-der-leyens-cop29-absence-sends-fatal-signal-say-watchers

Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to miss the Cop29 climate summit is “a fatal signal” and raises questions about Europe’s commitment to the climate crisis, observers have said.

The European Commission confirmed on Tuesday that its president would not attend the UN climate talks in Baku, which start on Monday. “The commission is in a transition phase and the president will therefore focus on her institutional duties,” a spokesperson said.

Also skipping the “world leaders’ climate action summit” on Tuesday and Wednesday are France’s Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing US president, Joe Biden. The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, cancelled his participation due to a head injury, Reuters reported. The leaders of China, South Africa, Japan and Australia are expected to miss the talks as well.

Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch socialist and the vice-chair of the European parliament’s delegation to the Baku talks, described von der Leyen’s absence as “regrettable”, but said it did not imply a lack of EU commitment.

He said: “The climate crisis does not wait for ideal conditions to act, and neither can we. After the re-election of [Donald] Trump, the EU must now take a stronger leadership role, both to sustain momentum and to counterbalance the US stance.”

Michael Bloss, a German Green MEP, also in the delegation, said it was “a fatal signal” that Europe’s most powerful woman, along with other leaders, had chosen not to attend.

Referring to Azerbaijan’s strongman president, Ilham Aliyev, Bloss said: “By leaving the stage to autocrats like Aliyev, we risk turning the conference more and more into a greenwashing spectacle for self-promotion rather than genuine climate action.”


Von der Leyen is preparing for her second term in office, expected to begin on 1 December after European parliament hearings with her top team conclude.

The commission will be represented at Cop29 by its climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, and the energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, and a team of negotiators.

WWF said von der Leyen’s non-attendance was disappointing. Shirley Matheson, a climate specialist at the charity, said her absence, along with other world leaders, raised “serious questions” about European and international commitment to fighting the climate crisis. “We cannot afford for climate action to move down on Europe’s agenda,” she added.

Von der Leyen has attended every high-level Cop meeting since she became commission president in 2019. In her successful pitch for re-election by MEPs, she highlighted the importance of Europe’s role in international climate talks: “I want Europe to remain a leader in international climate negotiations.”

The head of the UN environment programme said last month that “huge cuts” in carbon emissions were needed to steer the world off a path of catastrophic temperature rise, in a report urging countries to act at the climate summit in Baku.

Sven Harmeling, head of climate at the Climate Action Network Europe, said he did not see von der Leyen’s non-attendance as “not showing interest”, but added it was important she ensured the EU “is able to speak up and convey its ambition for climate leadership”.

“Stronger EU participation is always important to signal leadership, but for me it really comes down to how they use diplomatic channels,” he said, highlighting the bloc’s role at the G20 summit in Brazil on 18-19 November, where leaders of the world’s largest economies will discuss financing the climate transition.

On Wednesday, the commission said: “Our leadership is demonstrated by our consistent actions domestically and internationally. We are always a leading voice for ambition at Cops and that will not change this year.”

November 9, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

‘A wrecking ball’: experts warn Trump’s win sets back global climate action

Election of a ‘climate denier’ to US presidency poses ‘major threat to the planet’, environmentalists say. Donald Trump has called climate change ‘a big hoax’ and vowed to gut environmental rules ahead of his election victory

 Guardian 6th Nov 2024 Oliver Milman and Ajit Niranjan,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/06/trump-climate-change-environment-threat

Donald Trump’s new term as US president poses a grave threat to the planet if it blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global heating, stunned climate experts have warned in the wake of his decisive election victory.

Trump’s return to the White House is widely expected to result in the US, yet again, exiting the Paris climate agreement and may even remove American involvement in the underpinning United Nations framework to deal with the climate crisis.

While campaigning for president, Trump has called climate change “a big hoax”, scorned wind energy and electric cars and vowed to gut environmental rules and the “green new scam” of the Inflation Reduction Act, a major bill passed by Democrats to support clean energy projects.

Trump’s agenda, analysts have found, risks adding several billion tonnes of extra heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, further imperiling goals to stave off disastrous global heating that governments are already failing to meet. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the US is now a “failed democracy” and that “we now pose a major threat to the planet.”

The election result will send shockwaves through annual UN climate talks that start in Azerbaijan on Monday. “The election of a climate denier to the US presidency is extremely dangerous for the world,” said Bill Hare, a senior scientist at Climate Analytics, who warned a Trump administration would likely “damage efforts” to keep the world from heating by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a Paris target that now appears even further out of reach.

While Joe Biden’s administration will send a delegation to the Cop29 summit next week, this will be overshadowed by an incoming Trump government that threatens to disengage with other major carbon emitters, such as China, to address the climate crisis. “The nation and world can expect the incoming Trump administration to take a wrecking ball to global climate diplomacy,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Across Europe, climate activists and politicians who support stronger action to cut pollution reacted with despair to the news of Trump’s win. “This is a dark day in the US and globally,” said Thomas Waitz, an Austrian MEP and co-chair of the European Green party.

Luisa Neubauer, a German climate activist from the Fridays for Future movement, who went door-knocking for Harris, compared the feeling to a bad breakup. “A decision over parts of the near future has been made and most of us didn’t have a say in it,” she said. “And for a moment it feels like the world is going to end. It’s not. But the heartbreak is real.”

But they also urged supporters of climate action to not give up.

Areeba Hamid, joint executive director of Greenpeace UK, said it was “an election won with corporate cash, big polluter backers and disinformation” but that a global movement was already fighting to rein in the damage.

“We simply don’t have any more time to waste,” she added. “Whatever a Trump presidency chooses to do on global climate action, we know that damage can be contained if the grown-ups in the room speak up.”

When he was last president, Trump took several months to decide to remove the US from the Paris deal, raising fears the agreement would collapse. Countries did manage to avoid such a fate prior to Biden re-entering the pact and there is some optimism that the transition to cleaner energy isn’t something that Trump, despite his demands that the US “drill, baby drill” for oil and gas, can reverse.

“The US election result is a setback for global climate action, but the Paris agreement has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country’s policies,” said Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris deal.

“The context today is very different to 2016,” she said. “There is powerful economic momentum behind the global transition, which the US has led and gained from, but now risks forfeiting. The devastating toll of recent hurricanes was a grim reminder that all Americans are affected by worsening climate change.”

Much like after the previous withdrawal, cities and state within the US committed to climate action will try to fill the void of federal indifference, acting as de facto representatives at global summits and even engaging with other countries on how to cut emissions.

“No matter what Trump may say, the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not turning back,” said Gina McCarthy, former climate adviser to Biden and co-chair of the America Is All In coalition of climate-concerned states and cities.

“Our coalition is bigger, more bipartisan, better organized, and fully prepared to deliver climate solutions, boost local economies and drive climate ambition,” she said. “We cannot and will not let Trump stand in the way of giving our kids and grandkids the freedom to grow up in safer and healthier communities.”

Domestically, environmental groups have said they will attempt to rally Democrats, as well as some Republicans, to oppose Trump’s tearing down of climate policies, which is anticipated to include major cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and weakened pollution rules for coal plants, cars and fossil fuel drilling. “President Trump will face a bipartisan wall of opposition if he attempts to rip away clean energy incentives now,” said Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute.

“No matter what Trump may say, the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not turning back,” said Gina McCarthy, former climate adviser to Biden and co-chair of the America Is All In coalition of climate-concerned states and cities.

“Our coalition is bigger, more bipartisan, better organized, and fully prepared to deliver climate solutions, boost local economies and drive climate ambition,” she said. “We cannot and will not let Trump stand in the way of giving our kids and grandkids the freedom to grow up in safer and healthier communities.”

Domestically, environmental groups have said they will attempt to rally Democrats, as well as some Republicans, to oppose Trump’s tearing down of climate policies, which is anticipated to include major cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and weakened pollution rules for coal plants, cars and fossil fuel drilling. “President Trump will face a bipartisan wall of opposition if he attempts to rip away clean energy incentives now,” said Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute.

November 9, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

COP 29 chief exec filmed promoting fossil fuel deals


BBC 8th Nov 2024, Justin Rowlatt, BBC climate editor, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmzvdn9e18o

A senior official at COP29 climate change conference in Azerbaijan appears to have used his role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals, the BBC can report.

A secret recording shows the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

“We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” he says.

A former head of the UN body responsible for the climate talks told the BBC that Soltanov’s actions were “completely unacceptable” and a “betrayal” of the COP process.

As well as being the chief executive of COP29, Soltanov is also the deputy energy minister of Azerbaijan and is on the board of Socar.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team has not responded to a request for comment.

Oil and gas accounts for about half of Azerbaijan’s total economy and more than 90% of its exports, according to US figures.

COP29 will open in Baku on Monday and is the 29th annual UN climate summit, where governments discuss how to limit and prepare for climate change, and raise global ambition to tackle the issue.

However, this is the second year in a row the BBC has revealed alleged wrongdoing by the host government.

The BBC has been shown documents and secret video recordings made by the human rights organisation, Global Witness.

It is understood that one of its representatives approached the COP29 team posing as the head of a fictitious Hong Kong investment firm specialising in energy.

He said this company was interested in sponsoring the COP29 summit but wanted to discuss investment opportunities in Azerbaijan’s state energy firm, Socar, in return. An online meeting with Soltanov was arranged.

During the meeting, Soltanov told the potential sponsor that the aim of the conference was “solving the climate crisis” and “transitioning away from hydrocarbons in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.

Anyone, he said, including oil and gas companies, “could come with solutions” because Azerbaijan’s “doors are open”.

However, he said he was open to discussions about deals too – including on oil and gas……………

“There are a lot of joint ventures that could be established,” Soltanov says on the recording. “Socar is trading oil and gas all over the world, including in Asia.

….. The UN climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, acknowledges there will be a role for some oil and gas up to 2050 and beyond. However, it has been very clear that “developing… new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C”.

It also goes against the agreement the world made at the last global climate summit to transition away from fossil fuels.

Soltanov appeared eager to help get discussions going, telling the potential sponsor: “I would be happy to create a contact between your team and their team [Socar] so that they can start discussions.”

A couple of weeks later the fake Hong Kong investment company received an email – Socar wanted to follow up on the lead.

Attempting to do business deals as part of the COP process appears to be a serious breach of the standards of conduct expected of a COP official.

These events are supposed to be about reducing the world’s use of fossil fuels – the main driver of climate change – not selling more.

…………………………………… Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the signing of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit global temperature rises to well below 2C, told the BBC that she was shocked anyone in the COP process would use their position to strike oil and gas deals.

She said such behaviour was “contrary and egregious” to the the purpose of COP and “a treason” to the process.

The BBC has also seen emails between the COP29 team and the fake investors.

In one chain, the team discusses a $600,000 (£462,000) sponsorship deal with a fake company in return for the Socar introduction and involvement in an event about “sustainable oil and gas investing” during COP29.

………………… The findings come a year after the BBC obtained leaked documents that revealed plans by the UAE to use its role as host of COP28 to strike oil and gas deals.

COP28 was the first time agreement was reached on the need to transition away from fossil fuels.

November 9, 2024 Posted by | climate change, MIDDLE EAST, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

UK lobbyists accused of ‘greenwashing’ oil-rich Azerbaijan before Baku COP summit

Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime has been accused of human rights abuses, including jailing climate activists on ‘bogus’ charges

By Ben Gartside, November 3, 2024

A lobbying firm with close links to a former Cabinet minister and the fossil fuels industry is being paid $4.7m to help oil-rich Azerbaijan enhance its image ahead of the crucial UN COP climate summit next month, the i Paper can reveal.

The lobbying giant Teneo, which employs Labour’s former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw as well as Boris Johnson’s former business chief Alex Hickman, has been awarded a seven-month contract which campaigners claim will help the state “greenwash” its reputation.

On 11 November, the UN will host its COP 29 climate change summit in Baku, the Azerbaijan capital. It will be the first major global climate meeting after the US presidential election and will set the tone for discussions for tackling global warming. The talks will involve world leaders, ministers and negotiators and have a particular focus on how to make finance available to developing countries for climate action.

The choice of Azerbaijan as a host for the summit has been controversial. Its economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels and campaigners have criticised the regime’s human rights record, including the imprisonment of climate activists

An investigation by the i, in conjunction with the newsletter Democracy for Sale and SourceMaterial, reveals that as part of the Teneo contract, one of its British consultants will be paid “a monthly fee of $25,000, plus bonuses totalling $50,000” while only working on a “part-time basis”.

According to US documents Teneo will provide “media training” and advise on “narrative development” for the hosts of the COP summit.

The lobbying firm’s work will be led by its Global Strategy President Geoff Morrell who is a former executive at oil giant BP, which is Azerbaijan’s biggest foreign investor.

While working for BP, Morrell chided “opportunistic” environmentalists for exaggerating the impact of the company’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and discharged four million barrels of oil into the ocean.

Despite hosting the environmental summit, Azerbaijan is planning to ramp up oil and gas production over the next decade, according to a report from a German NGO.

The country, which earns 60% of its entire revenue from oil and gas, has also massively increased its gas exports to Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Climate campaign groups have accused Teneo of helping Azerbaijan to “greenwash” its image.

Lela Stanley, senior investigator at Global Witness said: “Firms helping petrostates like Azerbaijan … are complicit in greenwashing.

“Instead of focusing on glossing up their image, Azerbaijan and its partners should be making fossil fuel companies pay in to the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund. Planet-wrecking polluters should pay for the devastation they’ve caused.”

In addition to its work for the Azerbajian regime, Teneo has also signed lucrative deals to work with major fossil fuel producers Saudi Arabia and the UAE on other contracts, according to i‘s analysis of US government filings. It also works for some of the world’s leading fossil fuel firms including British Gas owner Centrica and mining giant BHP.

Kathy Mulvey, campaigner at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: “It’s a clear conflict of interest for a PR firm to be paid to serve both oil and gas company clients that are driving the climate crisis and the host country government charged with shepherding the upcoming international climate talks.”

According to the US documents, Teneo’s lobbying teamworking on the Azerbajian contract includes Boris Johnson’s former chief business adviser Alex Hickman.

Shortly after the general election, the firm sought to bolster their links to the Labour government by appointing former Labour Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw as a senior advisor.

Although the US documents do not list Bradshaw as one of the individuals working on the Azerbajian COP contract, when he was hired by Teneo, the firm’s UK chief executive Nick Claydon said: “Ben’s deep insights and experience in helping to understand the priorities and approach of the new Labour administration will be of tremendous benefit to Teneo’s clients around the world.”

Teneo’s senior managing director is Patrick Loughlan, one of Tony’s Blair’s former Downing Street special advisors and Labour’s former director of policy and head of research.

The firm’s managing director Robert Fuller also spent six weeks volunteering to help Labour during the recent election campaign.

Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel expansion plans

Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production by 2033, according to a report produced by Urgewald and CEE Bankwatch last month………………………………………………………………………
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-lobbyists-greenwashing-cop-3354835

November 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

‘Two sides of the same coin’: governments stress links between climate and nature collapse

Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against a backdrop of extreme weather and ecosystem collapse

Patrick Greenfield and Phoebe Weston in Cali, Guardian 4th Nov 2024

As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil’s enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries were recording alarming signs that their carbon sinks were collapsing under a combined weight of drought, tree death and logging. As Canada’s wildfire season crept to a close, scientists calculated it was the second worst in two decades – behind only last year’s burn, which released more carbon than some of the world’s largest emitting countries.

In global negotiations, climate and nature move along two independent tracks, and for years were broadly treated as distinct challenges. But as negotiations closed at the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali on Saturday, ministers from around the world underscored the crucial importance of nature to limiting damage from global heating, and vice versa – emphasising that climate and biodiversity could no longer be treated as independent issues if either crisis was to be resolved. Countries agreed a text on links between the climate and nature, but failed to include language on a phase out of fossil fuels.

The UK environment secretary, Steve Reed, said that attending the summit in Colombia had brought home the links between climate and biodiversity. “One of the other things that’s really struck me coming here and speaking to the Colombians in particular is how for them the nature crisis and the climate crisis are exactly the same thing. In the UK, perhaps more widely in the global north, we tend to talk a lot about climate and particularly net zero, and much less about nature – perhaps because we’re already more nature-depleted. But those two things connect entirely,” he said.

The Cop16 president, Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, has sought to put nature on a level with global efforts to decarbonise the world economy during the summit, warning that slashes to greenhouse gas emissions must be accompanied by the protection and restoration of the natural world if they are to be effective. Her presidency has repeatedly described nature and climate as “two sides of the same coin”.

“There is a double movement humanity must make. The first one is to decarbonise and have a just energy transition. The other side of the coin is to restore nature and allow nature to take again its power over planet Earth so that we can really stabilise the climate,” she has said throughout Cop16 and during the buildup……………………………………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/04/two-sides-of-the-same-coin-governments-stress-links-between-climate-and-nature-collapse

November 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change, environment | Leave a comment

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