COP29: Political will, not shortage of cash, is the problem

It is a UN global climate summit. It is underway, and a degree of cynicism hangs over this event. Not just that, the very real stench of crude oil also hangs over Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where indeed the world’s first oil well was sunk. It drips with irony, of course, that for the second year running a politically repressive petrostate is the host country.

Moreover, the news of Mr Trump’s victory in the US election has not exactly lifted the mood here. These two factors, coupled with the non- attendance of key world leaders from China, the biggest polluter, then India, through France, Germany to Canada and of course, Joe Biden, mean we are starting from a low base mood-wise .

Joe Biden’s key adviser, John Podesta, is here today, and the key question for him is, what can a lame duck administration offer to try and save the world from the pollution of humankind in what little time remains? And if they have some kind of rabbit to pull out of the hat, how far can White House lawyers stitch it up so that it cannot be unravelled by the coming four years of a climate crisis-denying Trump administration?

So to business and that above all else this year is money. Bluntly, the rich West, which caused the climate crisis with its carbon pollution, needs to pay up to protect the poorer countries, some of whose very existence is threatened by climate change and rising sea levels.

Around $2.4 trillion annually are required, and on the face of it, those figures look screamingly, painfully, impossible. In fact, though, we are already awash with money. The oil and gas industry has generated revenues of $3.5 trillion every year since 2018, and beyond that there are a host of minor tax adjustments, for example, on global bond trading, which would readily provide hundreds of billions every year.

So shortage of cash is not the problem. Political will, of course, is. Yet there is a sense that the beginnings of some kind of deal may already be being talked about. A figure of $400-600 billion annually is, it seems, already in play.

Keen to push this agenda, and indeed all matters green, of course, the local matter of a new Labour landslide government. Keir Starmer has put green energy transition at the centre of his economic offer to the country and the country bought it.

Delivery Man here for that: Ed Miliband. Of course, the British have always attended these summits. Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm at the Glasgow conference still resonates in some quarters, but latterly, the Conservatives’ enthusiasm for green transition and global climate diplomacy waned to such an extent that Rishi Sunak often dithered about whether to attend at all.

In short then, there are diplomatic mountains to climb in terms of this financial deal, no question about that. And the coming of Mr Trump? Well, it does not make any of that any easier, shall we say. But it’s easy to get sidetracked at these events, seduced into forgetting that politics and diplomacy is only ever one half of the story and perhaps even less than that.

Out beyond this vast conference lies a thing called global business and capitalism and its green transition is expanding at at least 11% a year. That is where huge flows of capital, investment, jobs, hopes, promise, are funnelling right around the world, and, yes, very much including the USA. That process, far from stopping or stuttering, is steadily accelerating.

Witness 2023 during which greenhouse gas emissions across the EU fell by over 8%. That is purely because of the shift to green energy, now so much cheaper and more attractive than it was a decade ago when the landmark Paris Accord on climate was signed.

So don’t look to this conference as the solution to the climate crisis, more like a battery that makes the machinery of capital flow better into clean green energy.