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How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales
I'm glad we got a deal at Cop29 – but western nations stood in the way of a much better one | Mukhtar Babayev
My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in Brazil
- Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
- China was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 president
Nine years after the Paris agreement, and after 11 months of multilateral diplomacy and two weeks of the most intense negotiations at Cop29 in Baku, we have a deal. Under the terms of the Baku breakthrough, the world’s industrialised nations will provide $300bn (£240bn), which, combined with resources from multilateral lending institutions and the private sector will reach $1.3tn in climate financing this year. Cop29 also finalised, after years of failed attempts, a global framework for international carbon markets trading, a critical mechanism for less polluting and less wealthy nations to raise climate finance. A fund for responding to loss and damage – another new financial resource for less developed nations – was brought in shortly before the summit, and funds are already being paid into it.
This deal may be imperfect. It does not keep everyone happy. But it is a major step forward from the $100bn pledged in Paris back in 2015.
Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
Continue reading...China was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 president
Azerbaijan’s Mukhtar Babayev criticises western countries for failing to provide enough money for developing world
China would have offered more money to the poor world to tackle the climate crisis if western countries had not failed to show leadership, the president of the Cop29 UN climate summit has said.
Cop29 ended early on Sunday morning after a marathon final negotiating session in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, with a deal on finance to developing countries that was widely attacked for being inadequate and a betrayal of trust.
Continue reading...Newsom Challenges Trump on Electric Vehicle Tax Credits
Storm Bert: forecasters and politicians criticised after devastating floods
Critics claim warnings and defences were inadequate but Met Office says storm was ‘well forecast’
Weather forecasters and politicians have come in for strong criticism after hundreds of homes and businesses across the UK suffered devastating flooding in Storm Bert but the Met Office has said it issued sufficient warning.
There were growing complaints in south Wales, one of the areas most heavily hit, that the Met Office issued only a yellow warning, rather than an amber or red, and that not enough new defences had been put in place by the Welsh government since storms last wreaked havoc in the area four years ago.
Continue reading...Donate This Holiday Season. Biodiversity Needs Your Help.
In-Air Emergencies Can Cause Lasting Trauma
Multilateralism faces a toxic brew of debt, climate crisis and war. It’s time for a reboot | Mo Ibrahim
The stakes are high for donors at next month’s IDA summit in Seoul, but not investing in development means more instability globally
Multilateralism is under attack. A toxic brew of multiplying conflicts, worsening climate impact, new pandemics and spiralling debt has brought the system to its knees, appearing almost incapable of properly addressing these converging crises. Adding the unknowns of a Trump administration into the mix will do little to allay concerns.
My own critiques of the current multilateral system are well documented, but I do not subscribe to the view that it has no future. What’s needed is a total reboot.
Continue reading...Live at the Port of Newcastle, it’s aquatic ecolarrikins vs gigantic fossil fuel death ships | First Dog on the Moon
We’re just messing about in boats
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A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair – podcast
Scientist James Lovelock gave humanity new ways to think about our home planet – but some of his biggest ideas were the fruit of a passionate collaboration. By Jonathan Watts
Continue reading...A mystery in Finnish Lapland, and what it means for the climate crisis – podcast
Biodiversity and environment reporter Patrick Greenfield travels to Finnish Lapland to investigate the disappearance of its carbon sink, and its implications for the fight against global heating
Finland has one of the most ambitious carbon-neutral goals in the world: to reach net zero by 2035. If this feels like a bold pledge, there’s good reason for it: two-thirds of the country is covered in forests, that have for decades absorbed more carbon dioxide than they have put out.
But recently, something has changed: Finland’s carbon sink is no longer working. In fact, in barely over a decade, its forests and peatlands have become a net emitter of carbon dioxide … with devastating consequences for the country’s climate goals.
Continue reading...World Seeks an End to Plastic Pollution at Talks in South Korea
As Cop29 wraps up and the climate crisis gathers pace, Australia’s dash for gas is confounding | Bill Hare
Nearly all observers believe Chris Bowen is strongly committed to action. Most agree that can’t be said for his party
Cop29 in Baku has concluded but its outcome is disappointing – in many dimensions. Its decisions on finance – agreeing that the developed world would provide US$300bn a year by 2035 – come nowhere close to what’s needed. Ultimately, it may even be poisonous because of its lack of ambition and muddled scope – it does not even cover loss and damage.
Baku saw little sense of urgency or increased climate action, despite the universal message from scientific studies, including the Climate Action Tracker. Our global update this year found that in the last three years there’s been virtually no improvement in either action on the ground, nor ambition to take action in the future. And this is despite a series of seemingly never-ending, global warming-linked deadly catastrophes unfolding around the world.
Continue reading...Australia urged to do more on climate crisis as activists rue trillion-dollar Cop29 funding gap
Wealthy nations agree to take the lead in helping developing countries shift to a low-carbon economy
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The Australian government has been urged to “step up” and do more to address the climate crisis after a major UN summit ended with a global finance agreement that developing countries criticised for not going far enough.
The Cop29 talks in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku ended at 4am on Sunday with a consensus agreement that developing countries would be paid at least US$300bn (A$460bn) a year in global climate finance by 2035 to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.
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Continue reading...Nations at COP29 Climate Summit Agree to Annual $300 Billion Pledge
The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver | Editorial
A rushed final text in Baku strains trust between nations, as inadequate climate finance commitments leave vulnerable countries calling for justice
The hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations – led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia – say this weekend’s agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders.
Independent experts say the developing world, excluding China, would need $1.3tn a year by 2035 to fund its green transition and keep temperature rises in line with the Paris agreement. The climate finance target, pushed through by the Azerbaijani chair, is described by poor nations as a death sentence for those already drowning under rising seas and facing devastating costs.
Continue reading...Cop29 climate finance deal criticised as ‘travesty of justice’ and ‘stage-managed’
Some countries say deal should not have been done and is ‘abysmally poor’ compared with what is needed
The climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is a “travesty of justice” that should not have been adopted, some countries’ negotiators have said.
The climate conference came to a dramatic close early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement to triple the flow of climate finance to poorer countries.
Continue reading...Developing countries condemn 'insufficient' Cop29 deal – video
Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a 'betrayal'.
Continue reading...The silver lining at a disappointing Cop29? It showed climate progress can survive Trump 2.0 | Geoffrey Lean
Away from the brutal main negotiations, there were important strides forward. The science can – and must – rise above politics
The resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And “nothing” was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku. This was one of the most difficult of the 29 Cops I have followed.
The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.
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