COP29 missed many important faces, including the current POTUS.
Hardly any of the world’s most powerful leaders will be making an appearance in Baku, Azerbaijan — yet another year that the annual Conference of the Parties, convened to stem the problem of warming, has been hosted by a petrostate. President Xi Jinping of China won’t be there, and neither will Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. President Emmanuel Macron of France, the bedraggled face of Western liberalism, is skipping the conference, too. Also missing will be Lula da Silva, who is the leader not just of Brazil but also of the Group of 20. As recently as the Glasgow summit in 2021, the annual climate confab was a who’s who of global power politics. These days, it’s more about who’s missing.
COP29 still happened:
Developed nations have agreed to help channel “at least” $300bn a year into developing countries by 2035 to support their efforts to deal with climate change.They were united in calling for developed countries to raise $1.3tn a year in climate finance.
In the end, negotiators agreed on a looser call to raise $1.3tn each year from a wide range of sources, including private investment, by 2035.
Some countries, including India and Nigeria, accused the COP29 presidency of pushing the deal through without their proper consent, following chaotic last-minute negotiations.
Countries failed to reach an agreement on how the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”, including a key pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, should be taken forward – instead shunting the decision to COP30 next year in Brazil.
They did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have been finalised nearly 10 years after it was signed.
Europe moves aways from its Green New Deal.
The European Commission will radically simplify EU green regulations in a bid to jumpstart Europe’s struggling industry and compete with faster-growing economies in Asia and America.
The changes will affect three laws that force companies to take more responsibility for their environmental impacts, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. Business had complained these rules were complicated and onerous, and suffocated Europe’s competitiveness.
It’s a decisive pivot away from the Green Deal program of the last five years, which put climate and the environment at the center of European lawmaking. The hope was that where Europe went, the world would follow.
