Hottest year on record but little hope of breakthrough at climate talks following Trump win

After losing soundly and decisively to Joe Biden in 2020, Donald Trump will return to the White House in 2025 as American voters have soured on the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, yet another round of international negotiations on addressing climate change get underway next week. Despite intense droughts, fierce wildfires, and devastating cyclones hitting national parks and public lands in every country, experts following the pace of climate negotiations see little chance of a breakthrough, especially considering the outcome of the 2024 United States presidential election.

US politics aren’t the only reason to be skeptical of any major progress being made at the 29^th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change starting Monday, said Jacqueline Peel, a University of Melbourne law professor.

Present-day geopolitics will anyway make progress complicated, she said, not to mention the fact that COP 29 is being held in the oil-producing former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan this year.

“The geopolitical headwinds for this particular COP and where it’s being hosted, in a petrostate again, are probably dampening the ambition or dampening the expectations of what this COP might deliver,” Peel said.Peel said she will be present in Baku to follow this latest round of international climate negotiations. Brazil will host the 2025 round of negotiations.

It’s getting hot in here

Peel and Mark Howden, a professor at the Australian National University, together held a press briefing to discuss the eve of 2024 international climate negotiations. Australia is bidding to host COP 31 in 2026.

Howden argued that the very possibility of Mr. Trump winning in the election had already weakened the US negotiating position well before any votes were cast.

“It’s probably a fair comment to make that the negotiating position of Biden and his colleagues is weakened by the result that has just occurred,” Howden said.

Diminished expectations moving into this year’s climate talks won’t sit well with scientists, climate activists, or anyone who understands physics and why ongoing industrial emissions guarantee higher average global temperatures.

It’s widely expected that the World Meteorological Organization will declare 2024 to be the hottest year ever in recorded history.

Though it hasn’t made that call yet, WMO reported on Thursday that the world was on track to reach that ominous record.

Howden said the only way 2024 doesn’t end up being the hottest year on record is if the Northern Hemisphere suddenly experiences a severe and unprecedented cold snap that lasts from now to the end of the year. WMO promises more detail when it releases its 2024 State of the Climate Report next week during COP 29.

To 1.5 degrees and beyond

More bad news preceded the launch of COP 29 climate talks in Azerbaijan.

Scientists with the European Union’s Copernicus Program reported on Thursday that they agree with WMO that 2024 is set to become the hottest single year on record.

The Copernicus Program also predicted that 2024 will close with global temperatures averaging more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times over the course of the year. That would put 2024 as the first year that milestone had ever been recorded.

Temperature records may even end up higher than that.

“October 2024 was 1.65°C above the pre-industrial level and was the 15th month in a 16-month period for which the global-average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” Copernicus officials said.

The laws of physics demand that thickening the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases via industrial-scale emissions will cause average global temperatures to increase. “Humanity’s torching the planet and paying the price,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said upon receiving word from WMO that 2024 average temperatures will likely prove higher than in 2023.

Don’t just do something, stand there

The first time he was elected to the White House, Mr. Trump maneuvered to formally withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a modestly worded international environmental pact that guides nations toward action they should take to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and mitigate against climate change.

Trump pulled the US out of the Paris accord even though that treaty is unenforceable and largely relies on voluntary actions. Howden and Peel argue that Mr. Trump may go farther this time.

They said it’s very possible that Mr. Trump could direct diplomats to pull the US out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entirely and to end US cooperation with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Either way, no one expects the United States to play a leading role in efforts to tackle global warming for the next four years.

Howden said he fears US inaction may encourage other countries to follow with inaction of their own.

“The science is pretty clear now,” he said. “We only have a handful of years before we run out of our carbon budget that’s consistent with 1.5 degrees, and at current rates of change we are likely to exceed 1.5 degrees on a trend basis by the end of this decade.”

“We haven’t got four years to waste,” he said.

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