Diplomats from around the world had planned to gather in Azerbaijan this week to focus squarely on raising the trillions of dollars needed to tackle global warming.
But so far, this year’s United Nations climate change summit has been dominated by another topic entirely: the U.S. election and the impending return of Donald J. Trump to the world stage.
When he comes back to the White House in January, Mr. Trump is widely expected to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and renege on America’s commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
That has world leaders and negotiators at the summit wondering how they can possibly strengthen efforts to curb global warming without the support of the planet’s wealthiest and most powerful nation.
For the moment, many countries are trying to put on a brave face.
“Success does not depend on one country alone — it depends on all of us,” said Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan’s deputy minister of foreign affairs and the lead negotiator at the climate summit, known as COP29.
Yet many delegates and observers gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, conceded that the United States’ looming retreat in the fight against climate change was a major setback. This year’s talks are aimed at persuading wealthy nations, who have historically pumped the most greenhouse gases into the air, to provide more financial aid to poor countries to adapt to heat waves, droughts and other dangers of climate change.
“It goes without saying that we are in a difficult position,” said Ashlee Thomas, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America, a nonprofit group that is urging rich countries to set a target of $1 trillion per year in climate finance. That goal could prove impossible without U.S. support.
The Biden administration, which has sent a large team of negotiators to the talks, has been trying to calm jittery nerves by highlighting U.S. efforts over the past four years to slash emissions, with officials arguing that a global transition to cleaner energy sources like wind and solar power is now unstoppable.
Yet in remarks on Monday, John Podesta, the senior U.S. climate diplomat, struck a somber tone.
“For those of us dedicated to climate action, last week’s outcome in the United States is obviously bitterly disappointing,” Mr. Podesta said. He acknowledged that the frequent swings in America’s commitment to tackling climate change were “more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face grow ever more catastrophic.”
At the same time, Ali Zaidi, President Biden’s national climate adviser, said that international cooperation on climate change had weathered a Trump presidency before and largely survived intact. In 2017, during his first term, Mr. Trump announced that he would pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement.
Over the ensuing four years, Mr. Zaidi said, the World Bank and other financial institutions nevertheless expanded their financial support for countries coping with climate change. In the United States, wind and solar power continued to expand and power plant emissions fell, despite Mr. Trump’s attempts to roll back environmental regulations. Congress also passed a bill in 2020 to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas.
Once the Biden administration came to power in 2021 and rejoined the Paris pact, the world’s richest countries were able to meet an earlier promise to provide $100 billion per year in climate aid to poorer countries, Mr. Zaidi said. And, in 2022, Congress ended up passing “the largest investment in clean energy and climate in the history of the world,” he added.
“My big-picture view on climate finance is, we’ve seen not just the United States but other countries zig and zag,” Mr. Zaidi said. “When you have a country that was pulling at the back of the pack, someone else is able to pick up the pace.”
Some diplomats suggested that the European Union could take more of a leadership role on global climate efforts in America’s absence.
Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special envoy on climate, pointed out that the European Union had already provided more climate aid to poorer countries than anyone else had, roughly $30 billion last year, and was ready to provide more, if other donors stepped up as well.
“The global race for clean industries will continue irrespective of elections,” Ms. Morgan said. “Germany and the European Union see the transition to a climate-neutral economy as a cornerstone of our future competitiveness.”
Others suggested that China, which now leads the world in solar and wind power, was poised to fill the gap left by the United States.
“We need to admit there is a leadership vacuum left by the change in the White House,” said Yuan Ying, a China representative for Greenpeace. “China is leading the way to provide clean-tech solutions on a global scale,” she said.
Yet some analysts said that America’s influence would be difficult to replace. While the United States has sometimes exasperated other countries at climate talks with its reluctance to provide financial aid, U.S. diplomats have played key roles in persuading countries like China, which is now the world’s biggest polluter, to commit to tougher emissions targets.
“Eliminating the role of the U.S. in encouraging China to commit to a more rapid emission reduction over the next 10 years — that could have major consequences,” said David Waskow, a climate expert at the World Resources Institute. “I think we have to recognize that.”
As the climate talks got underway on Monday in a converted soccer stadium in Baku, tensions were already on display. Countries spent hours unable to agree on the formal agenda for the summit, a process that is usually routine.
On Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, criticized wealthier nations that have called on developing countries like his to reduce their fossil fuel production, pointing out that the European Union was still relying on natural gas from his country.
“Unfortunately, double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled N.G.O.s and fake news media in some Western countries,” Mr. Aliyev said.
James Marape, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, said he would refuse to attend the negotiations this year because they had become “meaningless talkfests,” unable to provide funding for countries like his to reduce deforestation.
In an attempt to buoy the talks, Biden administration officials said they would hold a joint event with China and Azerbaijan on Tuesday to discuss how to reduce lesser-known but potent greenhouse gases like methane.
Some environmentalists expressed alarm that nations might use the Trump administration as an excuse to abandon their own climate efforts.
“It’s also possible that other companies use the cover of Trump to lessen their ambition,” said Dean Bhebhe, a climate activist at Power Shift Africa. “Will the rest of world follow Trump’s lead and just give up on the planet by default?”
United Nations officials, for their part, tried to keep talks on track by appealing to countries’ self-interest.
“If at least two-thirds of the world’s nations cannot afford to cut emissions quickly, then every nation pays a brutal price,” said Simon Stiell, the United Nations’ climate chief. “If nations can’t build resilience into supply chains, the entire global economy will be brought to its knees. No country is immune.”
“So let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity,” Mr. Stiell said. “An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest.”
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