It is a particularly modest COP29 that is opening today in Baku. The first aspect that immediately catches the eye is the absence of numerous international leaders. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Brazilian president, Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as the German chancellor Olaf Scholz will not take part in the summit.
All this, without neglecting the fact that the American president in pectore, Donald Trump, is ready to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement: a move that could arrive on the same day of his inauguration, i.e. next January 20th. That day, second PoliticalWashington could forward a formal request to the UN for withdrawal: at that point, the farewell would effectively come into force within twelve months. And that’s not all. According to the same newspaper, “some conservatives have also laid the groundwork for Trump to go even further if he wishes. One option would be to remove the United States from the 1992 UN treaty that underpins the entire framework for annual global climate negotiations.”
Furthermore, it has never been a mystery that Trump intended to abandon the Paris Agreement. The American president in pectore intends to focus heavily on traditional energy both to relaunch the energy independence of the United States and to meet the blue-collar workers of Pennsylvania. Secondly, the tycoon believes that the Paris Agreement would create disadvantages for Washington in its economic competition with Beijing. It is therefore from this perspective that his hostility towards that agreement should be read.
What makes the road to COP29 even more uphill is the fact that, according to the Guardian“It seems like there are already some issues that are causing problems at the conference.” “According to Dr. Simon Evans of Carbon Brief”, continued the British newspaper, “the ‘opening plenary was suspended for consultations on the draft agenda, which includes some controversial items’”. In particular, among the thorniest issues, that of the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism would appear. As if that weren’t enough, the summit also gets off to a bad start in terms of its image: the host state, Azerbaijan, has a state oil company, Socar, which has recently signed 25 international agreements for a total value of around eight billion. of dollars.
Of course, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, is trying to argue that the summit will prove to be central. “Those desperate to delay and deny the inevitable end of the fossil fuel era seek to turn clean energy into a dirty word. They will lose,” he said. However, the feeling is that, especially after the US turning point, it is Guterres who is now out of time. And the difficulties that Cop29 is already encountering at the beginning seem to certify this state of affairs. The wind is changing. In fact, it has already changed.
