In today’s newsletter: The view from Azerbaijan is of disappointingly low direct finance guarantees to the developing world, although it is ‘less bad than nothing’
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Good morning. Cop29 in Baku finally finished at 5.31am local time yesterday, more than 35 hours after it was due to conclude – and the extra time did not lead to a triumphant outcome.
On the biggest issue under discussion, the transfer of climate finance from the developed to the developing world, the headline figure in the agreement was $1.3tn (£1tn) by 2035. But that masked much smaller commitments in direct finance, mostly in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which amounted to only $300bn. Nor is the outcome an injustice whose impact is limited to the global South, of course: if the money isn’t there to support a green energy transition in developing economies, temperatures will rise all over the world.
UK weather | Storm Bert is expected to cause further disruption on Monday after torrential downpours caused “devastating” flooding over the weekend and a major incident in Wales. At least five people have died in England and Wales since the storm hit.
Economy | A defiant Rachel Reeves will rebuke critics of her tax-raising budget on Monday, telling disgruntled business leaders at the Confederation of British Industry that they have offered “no alternatives”. CBI director-general Rain Newton-Smith will meanwhile accuse Reeves of jeopardising economic growth, saying: “Tax rises like this must never again be simply done to business.”
Britons detained abroad | Families of prominent British prisoners detained abroad have urged the foreign secretary to deliver on pledges to help secure their release with signs of growing resistance from diplomats. There are fears that they are resisting a plan to appoint a special envoy on those detained abroad without a fair trial lest it affect trade deals.
Middle East | A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in a 25 October attack in south Lebanon which legal experts have called a potential war crime.
Europe | A little-known, far-right populist took the lead in Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, and will probably face leftist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu in a runoff in two weeks, an outcome that has rocked the country’s political landscape. Calin Georgescu led the polls with about 22% of the vote after nearly 93% of votes were counted.
The money could come not just in the form of the grants and very low-interest loans that developing countries need, but … from a “wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources”. Money will be “mobilised” rather than provided – a nice distinction that allows for the inclusion of private sector co-investing to be counted alongside public money from government budgets and development banks.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/25/2024 - 01:54
11/25/2024 - 00:00
World’s largest cruise line named Europe’s most climate-polluting, despite investing millions in cleaner technologies
The world’s largest cruise line company is responsible for producing more carbon dioxide in Europe than the city of Glasgow, a report has found.
Analysis by the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, provided to the Guardian, found Carnival to be the most climate-polluting cruise company sailing in Europe in 2023.
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11/24/2024 - 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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11/24/2024 - 15:07
Wealthy nations agree to take the lead in helping developing countries shift to a low-carbon economy
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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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11/24/2024 - 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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11/24/2024 - 10:13
Some countries say deal should not have been done and is ‘abysmally poor’ compared with what is needed
The climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is a “travesty of justice” that should not have been adopted, some countries’ negotiators have said.
The climate conference came to a dramatic close early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement to triple the flow of climate finance to poorer countries.
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11/24/2024 - 09:00
If Peter Dutton senses an opportunity in blocking bills in the lead-up to an election, he might just take it
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The final parliamentary sitting week of the year is here!
That odour you’re smelling is drip filter coffee to fuel late-night Senate votes and the faint whiff of desperation to pass as much of the government’s legislative agenda as possible.
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11/24/2024 - 08:31
Away from the brutal main negotiations, there were important strides forward. The science can – and must – rise above politics
The resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And “nothing” was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku. This was one of the most difficult of the 29 Cops I have followed.
The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.
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11/24/2024 - 05:03
Countries agree on how to create, trade and register credits to meet climate commitments
It was once among the most promising ways to funnel climate finance to vulnerable communities and nature conservation. The trading of carbon credits, each equal to a tonne of CO2 that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere, was meant to target quick, cost-effective wins on climate and biodiversity. In 2022, demand soared as companies made environmental commitments using offsets, with the market surpassing $2bn (£1.6bn) while experiencing exponential growth. But the excitement did not last.
Two years later, many carbon markets organisations are clinging on for survival, with several firms losing millions of dollars a year and cutting jobs. Scandals about environmentally worthless credits, an FBI charge against a leading project developer for a $100m fraud, and a lack of clarity about where money from offsets went has caused their market value to plunge by more than half. Predictions that standing rainforests and other carbon-rich ecosystems would become multibillion-dollar assets have not yet come to pass.
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11/24/2024 - 05:00
The broadcaster thinks if he fires up his farming fanbase they can shield him from his obligation to contribute his fair share to society
I read Andrew Michael Hurley’s new novel, Barrowbeck, in preparation for co-hosting Tales of the Weird, a timely event on the folk horror genre at the British Library earlier this month. I’m not the most informed commentator on this literary subset by any means, but I am, after Mark Gatiss, one of the most famous, and so I am often asked to pontificate about it. That’s the way the world works, I’m afraid. That’s why Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel are presenting a new show for Channel 4 about cycling across France, instead of the cyclist who cycled across France earlier this year and won the Tour de France cycling race, whoever he was.
Barrowbeck follows the fortunes of a Yorkshire hamlet, from an itinerant tribe making a pact with their gods 2,000 years ago, in which they promise to honour the land, to the near future of 2041. There, climate change has seen that same land flooded, some inhabitants holding on in hope as a cycle of life that stretched back millennia indisputably ends, as it will for all of us, sooner, it seems, rather than later. And these are the doomed lands our wealthiest farmers are taking to the streets to inherit (at half the inheritance tax anyone else would pay).
Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf next year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. He is also a guest of all-female Fall karaoke act the Fallen Women, at the Lexington, London on 28 December
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