Delegates were urged to put aside differences and move negotiations forward during the two-day “pre-COP” in Azerbaijan, which is hosting the major climate talks in November…
But the gathering wrapped with nations no closer to resolving the same sticking points that have hindered the talks for months, attendees told AFP…
At COP29, countries are supposed to agree on a new goal for “climate finance” that meets the needs of the world’s poorest countries in dealing with global warming. The existing amount of $100 billion a year is considered insufficient and rich countries are under pressure to raise their contributions by at least a factor of 10.
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…
As they start another COP get-together, I thought it would be interesting to review the top CO2 emitting regions. Below is a chart from Our World in Data.
CO2 from energy, 2023, million tonnes
N. America 5649.1
S. & Cent. America 1308.1
Europe 3546.8
CIS 2178.8
Middle East 2258.3
Africa 1335.1
Asia Pacific 18,853.5
------------ --------
Total World 35,129.8
There seems to be one outlier on that list.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
As long as these climate conferences are about the transferring of $100 billion or more per year from rich nations to poorer nations, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is just going to keep rising. Nobody is willing to address where the real problems lie.
Here is a map from Our World in Data. If you go to the website, you can mouse over a particular country to get their per-capita CO2 emissions. You can also see a graph for the trend of a particular country. China, India and most of the rest of Asia are trending up, while most western countries are trending down.
A partial list of per-capita CO2, in tonnes per person, as of 2022.
USA: 14.9 t
Canada: 14.2
China: 8
India: 2
Germany: 8
Japan: 8.5
Russia: 11.4
The atmosphere doesn’t care about per capita emissions. The atmosphere only responds to the total amount of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) being put into it every year. Worldwide, the largest portion is being emitted from the Asia Pacific region, and those Asian emissions are rising, while most of the rest of the developed world is declining, or perhaps staying about the same.
Which is why the only real solution is a reduction in the number of ‘capitas’.
War is one way, plagues are another. I suppose asteroid impacts would count also.
Italy helped a retailer open chocolate and gelato stores across Asia. The United States offered a loan for a coastal hotel expansion in Haiti. Belgium backed the film “La Tierra Roja,” a love story set in the Argentine rainforest. And Japan is financing a new coal plant in Bangladesh and an airport expansion in Egypt.
Funding for the five projects totaled $2.6 billion, and all four countries counted their backing as so-called climate finance…“This is the wild, wild west of finance,” said Mark Joven, Philippines Department of Finance undersecretary, who represents the country at U.N. climate talks. “Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance.”
Fossil fuels are a gift from God and giving them up is not realistic, the host of the COP29 climate summit has said.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, defended his country’s oil and gas industry during opening remarks at the conference in the country’s capital Baku on Tuesday.
He said: “As a president of COP29 of course, we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic.
“Countries should not be blamed for having oil and gas resources, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them. The people need them.
It’s true, absolutely true. I find it absurd that we haven’t found. way to use nuclear energy effectively as France has done for decades. ALL, or almost all, of our base load should be nuclear. Non-polluting, steady, very clean (has some small amount of waste that needs to be stored, but minuscule compared to the energy it produces), very green.
Text says developed countries to provide $250 billion by 2035
Excludes reference to transitioning away from fossil fuels
COP29 talks likely to drag on for few more days
The draft text of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) released Nov. 22 proposes that developed countries take the lead to provide $250 billion by 2035 to developing countries to combat climate change. This funding will be sought from “a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources,” the text added. However, this is much lower than what developing countries were calling for, which was for a quantum ranging from $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion annually.
BAKU, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Countries agreed on Sunday to an annual finance target of $300 billion to help poorer countries deal with impacts of climate change, with rich countries leading the payments, according to a hard fought deal clinched at the COP29 conference in Baku.
The new goal is intended to replace developed countries’ previous commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer nations by 2020. That goal was met two years late, in 2022, and expires in 2025.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This wealth transfer will do nothing to change the rising trend in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Most of the money intended for dealing with the consequences of climate change will probably end up being wasted, lost or stolen.
On the other hand, I doubt the new US presidential administration will go along with this plan.
I wonder if they’re going to license their time machine.
I read somewhere that while it took four years to exit from the Paris Agreement, the second time around the waiting period is only one year. Does anybody know if this is true?
That’s the way time zones work. It can be Saturday afternoon here in the US, but after midnight Sunday morning in Baku, Azerbaijan. I’m guessing the COP negotiators were up very late Saturday night, hammering out the deal, and then Reuters reported on it sometime after midnight.
It also states that: 2) “Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.”
The Paris Agreement entered into force on the 4 November 2016. This means that, for Parties that had joined by then, the earliest date that any of them may leave the Agreement is 4 November 2020.
The latest COP is over after a so-so start with the host country looking for gas and oil opportunities and calling them “a gift from god”. Political leaders were scarce – no Biden, no Xi, no Putin, no Modi, no Scholtz, no Von der Leyen – though there were 67,000 other people there.
Previous COPs have produced agreements of quite lengthy length, but not this one in Baku, despite the by now traditional dramatic end, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, walk-outs and time over-runs. This one runs to just 38 numbered paragraphs.
Here is Paragraph 1 of the final agreement, with a very interesting clause about food production:
1. Affirms that the new collective quantified goal on climate finance is aimed at contributing to accelerating the achievement of Article 2 of the Paris Agreement of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change; increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emission development in a manner that does not threaten food production; and making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
So, climate mitigation and/or adaptation measures might threaten food production? Who knew?
