COP30 Summit in Brazil Contends With Trump’s Disdain for Climate Change
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It’s no secret that green momentum has lost its luster in the past year.
The US has abandoned all pretense of caring, with President Donald Trump denouncing climate change as a “hoax” and clean energy a “scam.”
That puts the onus for action on other world leaders descending into the Amazon for the UN COP30 climate summit.
It’s a task made all the challenging with global growth spluttering and a renewed focus on energy security slowing the push to decarbonize.
Some nations are dialing back climate policies and companies retreating from net-zero pledges. The world is on its way to overshooting a key goal set in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
A look at the data, though, shows climate action is starting to deliver.
Over $10 trillion has been invested in the green transition in the decade to 2024, including $2 trillion last year alone. The wave of funding into renewable power, EVs, battery storage and grids will keep humanity away from the worst impacts of climate change.
While the nightmare scenario may have been averted, the world is still heading for dangerous levels of heating. Negotiators at COP30 in Belém are charged with coming up with new measures to slow climate change.
The Brazilian host, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is looking to forge a more concrete path away from oil, gas and coal. A fund launched to protect the Amazon rainforest has gathered $5 billion in pledged contributions, and Lula is pushing to quadruple sustainable fuel production by 2035.
There are moves for an international treaty to slash methane emissions, and against climate disinformation.
UN chief António Guterres’ denunciations of a “moral failure and deadly negligence” by governments surely won’t trouble Trump.
But the next two weeks might just show the US as increasingly isolated.
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Israel launched some of its heaviest airstrikes on Lebanon since it agreed to a ceasefire with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah around a year ago. The attacks late yesterday, which Israel said were aimed at weapons sites and other infrastructure in southern Lebanon, have further stoked fears among Lebanese that the two sides will revert to war.
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Lawmakers in Peru declared Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum unwelcome, days after her administration granted asylum protections to a former Peruvian prime minister who has been hiding out in a diplomatic residence in Lima.
Trump said he would visit India at the urging of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the latest sign of a possible thaw in a trade dispute that has soured ties.
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Chart of the Day
As US-China relations lurch between escalation and detente, some American states are pursuing their own diplomacy to secure access to the world’s second-largest market. While many have adopted policies to limit Chinese investment, others like Washington and Oregon are seeking to preserve local jobs by maintaining ties. The parallel track of engagement highlights the diverging interests fracturing the US’s approach to its chief rival.
And Finally
In June 2022, Chinese tech mogul Charles Chao stunned US leaders of the TuSimple self-driving truck startup he helped take public with a marketing video for a similar venture his company was backing. The startup had just launched in China and appeared to be tapping TuSimple’s pioneering technology — despite a US government deal meant to keep it in America. The episode underscores the risks the Trump administration faces as Beijing seeks to weaken US national security safeguards and a breakthrough nears with another innovative tech company with deep China roots: TikTok.
Pop quiz (no cheating!). The leader of which country said she will pursue charges against a man who groped and attempted to kiss her as she was walking in the capital’s historical center this week? Send your answers to balancepower@bloomberg.net