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‘Travesty of justice’: Cop29’s controversial deal – podcast

The Guardian Climate Change - 9 hours 42 min ago

Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, about the controversial climate finance deal that brought Cop29 negotiations to a close in the early hours on Sunday morning in Baku, Azerbaijan. Developing countries asked rich countries to provide them with $1.3tn a year to help them decarbonise their economies and cope with the effects of the climate crisis. But the final deal set a pledge of just $300bn annually, with $1.3tn only a target. Damian tells Madeleine how negotiations unfolded, and what we can expect from next year’s conference in Brazil

Find all the Guardian’s reporting on Cop29

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Categories: Climate

Cop29 deal fails to consider inflation so is not tripling of target, economists say

The Guardian Climate Change - 11 hours 23 min ago

Experts say financial movements mean poor nations will in effect get billions less in value from £300bn pledge

A failure to factor in inflation means the $300bn (£240bn) climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed, economists have said.

The international talks in Baku were pulled back from the brink of collapse early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement in which rich countries promised to raise $300bn a year by 2035. On paper, this is a tripling of the previous climate finance target of $100bn a year by 2020, and has been trumpeted as such by the UN and others.

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Categories: Climate

Storm Bert: drone footage shows extent of flooding at English holiday park – video

The Guardian Climate Change - 12 hours 5 min ago

Drone footage captured on Monday showed flooded caravans at Billing Aquadrome Holiday Park near Northampton, Northamptonshire. Storm Bert will continue to bring disruption into Monday after torrential downpours caused 'devastating' flooding over the weekend.

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Categories: Climate

How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - 14 hours 27 min ago
Fewer people will be able to afford electric cars and trucks if President-elect Donald J. Trump and Republicans in Congress eliminate a $7,500 federal tax credit.
Categories: Climate

I'm glad we got a deal at Cop29 – but western nations stood in the way of a much better one | Mukhtar Babayev

The Guardian Climate Change - 14 hours 44 min ago

My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in Brazil

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

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Categories: Climate

China was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 president

The Guardian Climate Change - 14 hours 44 min ago

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.

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Categories: Climate

Newsom Challenges Trump on Electric Vehicle Tax Credits

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - 14 hours 45 min ago
Gov. Gavin Newsom said California would fill the void for residents if the Trump administration killed a $7,500 E.V. tax credit.
Categories: Climate

A Climate Change

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - 17 hours 9 min ago
We explore Donald Trump’s climate agenda.
Categories: Climate

Storm Bert: forecasters and politicians criticised after devastating floods

The Guardian Climate Change - 18 hours 17 min ago

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.

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Categories: Climate

Donate This Holiday Season. Biodiversity Needs Your Help.

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - 18 hours 42 min ago
Help for converting a garden, no matter how small, into a wildlife sanctuary.
Categories: Climate

In-Air Emergencies Can Cause Lasting Trauma

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - 18 hours 45 min ago
Extreme turbulence, a blown-out door, an engine on fire: For passengers and crew members who have experienced in-air emergencies, the pain endures.
Categories: Climate

Multilateralism faces a toxic brew of debt, climate crisis and war. It’s time for a reboot | Mo Ibrahim

The Guardian Climate Change - 21 hours 45 min ago

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.

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Categories: Climate

Live at the Port of Newcastle, it’s aquatic ecolarrikins vs gigantic fossil fuel death ships | First Dog on the Moon

The Guardian Climate Change - 22 hours 21 min ago

We’re just messing about in boats

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Categories: Climate

A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair – podcast

The Guardian Climate Change - 23 hours 45 min ago

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

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Categories: Climate

A mystery in Finnish Lapland, and what it means for the climate crisis – podcast

The Guardian Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 22:00

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.

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Categories: Climate

World Seeks an End to Plastic Pollution at Talks in South Korea

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 20:23
Many nations hope to reduce the half a billion tons of plastic made each year. But pushback from plastic and oil producers, and Donald Trump’s election, could scuttle an agreement.
Categories: Climate

As Cop29 wraps up and the climate crisis gathers pace, Australia’s dash for gas is confounding | Bill Hare

The Guardian Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 19:27

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.

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Categories: Climate

Australia urged to do more on climate crisis as activists rue trillion-dollar Cop29 funding gap

The Guardian Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 18:59

Wealthy nations agree to take the lead in helping developing countries shift to a low-carbon economy

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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Categories: Climate

Nations at COP29 Climate Summit Agree to Annual $300 Billion Pledge

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 17:20
Delegates from developing countries described the deal’s financial target, $300 billion per year by 2035, as lacking the ambition needed to help their governments combat climate change.
Categories: Climate

The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver | Editorial

The Guardian Climate Change - November 24, 2024 - 12:42

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.

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Categories: Climate