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After a year of ever more extreme weather and continually rising global temperatures, it’s no wonder this year’s UN climate summit has been called – once again – the “last-chance saloon”.
Yet swaggering out through its swing doors goes president-elect Donald Trump.
The timing of his election win, with its promise to withdraw the US from the global climate process, couldn’t be worse.
Next year is forecast to exceed 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time – something the Paris Agreement is designed to prevent from becoming the norm.
Despite that and nearly 30 years of talks, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising.
Yet just a handful of nations have committed to cut them enough to prevent close to three degrees of warming by the end of the century.
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So does America’s sudden departure, at this most precarious of moments, spell disaster?
Under previous administrations, the US was a major diplomatic force at the talks – brokering significant concessions from more recalcitrant states, including the world’s largest polluter, China.
It also set ambition, adopting carbon-cutting pledges and domestic policies like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that sent a powerful message to others that if the US saw a future beyond fossil fuels, everyone could.
As the largest shareholder in the World Bank, the US was also seen as key to brokering a new deal to finance the green transition in poorer countries: the main objective of the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan.
Now, although its negotiating…
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