As the world is expected to smash past 1.5 degrees climate targets, 2024 has been an all-important year for climate negotiation. But this year’s Cop29 has been overshadowed by Trump’s return to the Presidency and a growing retreat back to national isolationism. With the stability of the Paris Agreement under increasing pressure, is there any point in the climate conferences at all?

 

Taking place in Azerbaijan, Cop29 has been intensely scrutinised by environmental activists, like Greta Thunberg, who say the “authoritarian petrostate” is entirely unsuitable to host a “Cop of Peace”– considering its history of human rights violations. More harrowingly, Azerbaijan’s President, Aliyev, opened this year’s Cop by saying fossil fuels are “a gift of the God”, he also took shots at Western politicians, state-controlled NGOs, and “fake news media” and their “double standards.” 

 

Took shots at Western politicians, state-controlled NGOs, and “fake news media” and their “double standards.”

In the most atypical Cop opening, usual calls for consensus have been replaced with political attacks that, whether true or not, have divided state diplomats. Leading the he French Ecology Minister to withdraw altogether, after Paris was accused of “crimes” in its Pacific territory of New Caledonia- this same speech received loud applause from some Pacific Island nations.

 

These shaky beginnings have only been exacerbated by a looming second Trump term that threatens to undo most of the climate initiatives started under the Biden administration. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill,” agenda has promised to freeze spending under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that increased federal support for green technologies.

 

American Democrats at Cop29 have been trying to suck it up, as they claim Trump won’t stop the American energy transition even if there’s an “absence of leadership in the White House”. This cheery message has not been shared by Republicans however, who’ve been arguing in favour of increased oil and gas production, even emphasising coal’s place in the energy sector. Morgan Griffith, Republican Congressman for a coal country district in Virginia, mirrored Azerbaijan’s autocratic leader, saying: “An area that has natural resources should not be penalised for not looking at the opportunity to have a cleaner world.” 

 

Although the Democrats choose to see the climate glass as half full, their control over legislation is very much empty. Republicans are set to control the US Senate, House of Representatives and of course, the Presidency. This ‘trifecta’ allows Trump to make sweeping changes, even if their majority control in both chambers is relatively weak.Fears around Trump’s impact stretch beyond the US; Argentinian president Milei, pulled out Argentine representatives from Azerbaijan last week, most likely emboldened by his talk with Trump the previous day, in which Trump openly said he was his “favourite president”. The far-right leader has previously called the climate crisis a “socialist lie”, as well as threatened to withdraw from the Paris Agreement entirely. 

 

Oscar Soria, Argentina director of the Common Initiative thinktank, said: “Argentina’s decision to leave the Baku talks is a sharp departure from its traditional climate policy, not a surprise under Milei’s government, who have pressured Argentine diplomats to take untenable positions in the past.” He called the decision “purely ideological” and going against “the best interest of the country, whose economy was severely impacted by the climate crisis.”

 

Climate negotiation seems to be the only faucet of diplomacy getting at least some of the world leaders around the negotiating table

As the climate crisis hits a critical junction, with scientists agreeing that keeping the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, the growing division between nations, as far-right populist leaders are elected across the West, is an alarming sight. Regardless, climate negotiation (however inefficient it may be), seems to be the only faucet of diplomacy getting at least some of the world leaders around the negotiating table. Other more eccentric means of climate discussion seem to land more and more in prison with conspicuously harsh sentences, as was seen earlier this year, where five Just Stop Oil protesters were jailed for a combined twenty years.

 

All hope should not be lost in our swiftly-arriving future post-1.5C, as Grahame Madge, spokesman for the UK Met Office has said, “if we can’t get 1.5C, it will be better to get 1.6C than 1.7C”. Climatologists are unsure where the tipping point is after 1.5C so “every fraction of a degree is worth fighting for” Madge said. There is a growing choice to be made either towards collaboration and forward moving climate agreements, or a backward retreat to easy economic growth and national isolationism. The latter which loomed over Cop29 however, does push one to start some serious soul-searching.

 

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