Crypto News: COP in the shadow of Trump

Nearly 200 nations will soon gather for the annual COP29 summit, where efforts to increase funding for poor countries and slash emissions will run against the reality of a hostile American president.

You can read the full story — and all of our COP29 coverage — for free on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate news and data, please subscribe.

By Jennifer A Dlouhy

The election of Donald Trump — and his vow to once again undertake a US retreat from international climate diplomacy — poses a decisive threat to the fight against global warming, as the window for meaningful action closes.

Trump's win comes just days before representatives from nearly 200 nations gather in Azerbaijan for COP29, the annual United Nations climate summit. That two-week meeting will start Monday in the shadow of a Republican president-elect who has promised to lead another withdrawal from the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

A fresh exodus by the world's largest economy and second-biggest emitter, reprising a move made during Trump's first term, could have longer-lasting repercussions this time. Trump is now in position to undermine the already-eroding faith in the climate cooperation that has shaped the past decade. His return promises to destabilize the delicate diplomacy that has galvanized worldwide efforts to slash planet-warming pollution and deploy zero-emission power. Without American engagement, efforts to cut emissions could stall in the decade ahead that's seen as crucial for keeping Earth's rising temperatures in check.

Trump's victory is "an alarming escalation of climate risk for the world's most vulnerable communities," said Harjeet Singh, a climate activist for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. "By stepping back from climate commitments, Trump's actions threaten to unravel trust in a global system already strained by the indifference and inaction of wealthy nations."

Diplomats are already wrestling with the consequences. Although Trump won't be sworn in for two months, his election turns the US delegation to COP29 into lame ducks with diminished credibility and less leverage. It will severely complicate negotiations over how much public finance rich countries can deliver to developing nations on the front lines of climate change, a key aim of discussions at this year's summit. It's also likely to constrain countries' ambitions in setting new carbon-cutting pledges due next February.

Beyond the fallout at COP29, there could be far more sweeping consequences. Another US retreat from climate cooperation has the potential to obliterate any lingering hope of keeping the world's temperature rise below 1.5C, a critical goal enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

"We need dramatically raised global ambition to have any chance of staying below 2 — much less 1.5 — degrees," said Alden Meyer, a senior adviser with the climate change think tank E3G. The US reversal has "a real world impact," he said.

The US has long been viewed as both an unreliable and necessary partner in annual climate talks. The country failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that underpins the negotiations more than two decades ago, and it has partially reneged on its past pledge to steer billions of dollars to a UN climate fund.

President Donald Trump speaks during an Unleashing American Energy event at the Department of Energy in 2017. Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/UPI

Back in 2017, this lack of dependability culminated in then-President Trump's announcement that he was pulling out of the Paris Agreement. Even though other countries didn't follow the US withdrawal and President Joe Biden was able to rejoin the agreement in 2021, the exit still sidelined a country that's been essential to driving momentum on climate action. The US is the largest shareholder of the World Bank, a key institution for financing the energy transition, and American negotiations with China have helped forge bilateral consensus, spur action in Beijing and pave the way for watershed global commitments, including a 2023 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

The US also has wielded its diplomatic might — and leveraged its existing relationships with other nations — to secure bigger international climate agreements and deeper emission-cutting pledges. It's "a pretty powerful diplomacy machine," said Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director of international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Having the US not driving that diplomacy will definitely hurt the push to get more finance and more action."

How will other countries and US states fill the climate action void? Read the full story for free on Bloomberg.com.

1.55C

The global average temperature in 2024 will likely be this much above pre-industrial levels, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday. This year will be the first to exceed the ideal 1.5C target set at the Paris climate conference in 2015.

"Every fraction of a degree matters, as climate disasters get rapidly worse."

Simon Stiell

Executive secretary of UN Climate Change

The best estimate of where warming will peak this century, based off the national climate plans, is between 2.1C-2.8C, according to UN Climate Change.

From the view of hurricane-battered island countries like the Bahamas, the world must soon reckon with the fact it's sailing past the temperature goal of 1.5C. Analysis shows the planet is heading toward levels where critical climate tipping points may be breached — meaning adaptation is becoming a matter of survival.

Yet of the $155 million the Bahamas has received in climate finance, just $10 million has been targeted towards adaptation, according to Rochelle Newbold, the prime minister's special advisor on climate change. That compares to the more than $3 billion of damages caused by Hurricane Dorian five years ago — an event the Bahamas is still recovering from.

A new UN report released on Thursday shows the world is hundreds of billions of dollars off target for financing adaption to climate change. The push for more money to help fend off the impacts of increasingly extreme weather will be part of the big climate finance fights at year's COP29 summit in Azerbaijan. Read the full story for free here.

A damaged home in Elbow Key Island, Bahamas, in 2019. Photographer: Jose Jimenez/Getty Images

Olaf Scholz cancels COP29 trip. The German chancellor will no longer attend the COP29 climate summit as he grapples with a political crisis at home, adding to a European leadership vacuum at this year's talks.

Can China fill the gap? Donald Trump's victory in this week's US election comes with plenty of risks for China. But it also hands Beijing a rare opportunity to take a global leadership role at upcoming climate talks.

By Josh Saul and Will Mathis

Shares in clean energy companies plunged after Donald Trump's victory in the US election. The president elect has long criticized climate policies as the "green new scam" and has said he plans an array of tariffs that impact the industry.

Yet, some analysts don't see Trump's second term as all bad news for clean energy.

Fundamentals like revenue and profit outlooks don't change for many clean energy companies under a Trump presidency, said Rob Barnett, a Bloomberg Intelligence energy analyst. "The future of solar, the future of wind, in my opinion, looks pretty bright," he said, adding that the rapid buildout of those technologies are driven only in part by federal policy.

In fact, despite Trump's distaste for wind turbines, profit incentives helped drive an expansion of clean energy even during his first term.