This year has been “a masterclass in human destruction”, the UN secretary general has said as he reflected on extreme weather and record temperatures around the world fuelled by climate breakdown.
António Guterres painted a stark portrait of the consequences of climate breakdown that had arisen in recent months. “Families running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities and tearing down infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops,” he said. “All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by human-made climate change.”
Guterres was addressing scores of world leaders and high-ranking government officials from nearly 200 countries gathered in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 UN climate summit. Over a fortnight of talks, nations will try to find ways to raise the vast sums of money needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Developing countries want guarantees of $1tn a year in funds by 2035 to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.
The talks have been overshadowed by the re-election of Donald Trump, an avowed climate denier, to the US presidency. Although leaders including the UK’s Keir Starmer, Barbados’s Mia Mottley and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the summit, the heads of government of most of the world’s biggest economies stayed away.
Starmer confirmed stringent new plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as revealed by the Guardian, which were praised by campaigners and experts. The UK is one of the first major economies to unveil such a plan, months ahead of a UN deadline of next February.
The cut, of 81% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels, will be partly met by decarbonising the electricity sector, but the government is also likely to have to add new policies to encourage public transport and walking, and a switch from gas heating to electric heat pumps.
Starmer told journalists at Cop29 that this need not involve drastic changes to people’s lifestyles, though the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, had previously recommended a 25% cut in meat and dairy consumption by 2030 and a 35% cut in meat consumption by 2050.
Rebecca Newsom, a senior policy adviser at Greenpeace International, said: “Starmer’s commitment to a relatively ambitious new target for cutting emissions will inject new momentum into the talks and he is right to highlight the huge opportunity offered by the green transition to cut bills, unlock investment and create jobs across the UK. But much clearer plans are still needed – particularly more investment for those working in offshore oil and gas to transition to renewable energy.”
Governments were told at Cop they must take concerted action on reducing greenhouse gases or face economic disaster that could threaten them electorally.
Simon Stiell, the UN’s top climate official, said politics, economics and the climate were now fatally entwined. Governments may currently be feeling the consequences of the worst inflation for decades but far more serious consequences were in store.
“Worsening climate impacts will put inflation on steroids,” Stiell said, tuning in to some of the economic fears that have helped deliver a series of electoral victories to rightwing parties around the world in the past year.
“The climate crisis is a cost-of-living crisis, because climate disasters are driving up costs for households and businesses. Climate finance is global inflation insurance.”
Rather than being an issue of protecting future generations, tackling greenhouse gas emissions was the only way to save the global economy in the short as well as the long term, Stiell said. “There has been a seismic shift in the global climate crisis. Because the climate crisis is fast becoming an economy killer – right now, today, in this political cycle,” he said.
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Ilham Aliyev, the president of the Cop’s host nation, Azerbaijan, struck a different note. Azerbaijan has been a sizeable producer of oil and gas since the mid-19th century. Fossil fuels make up 90% of the country’s export income, and the infrastructure of oil and gas extraction is everywhere in evidence around the capital, Baku: a flaring refinery lights up the city’s night-time skyline, oil wells dot the suburbs, and tankers lumber across the Caspian Sea to its port. Even the country’s national symbol is a flame.
Aliyev, whose family is thought to have made billions from the country’s natural assets, called Azerbaijan’s oil and gas “a gift from God” and made clear the extraction would continue.
“As president of Cop29, of course we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it,” he told the event. “But at the same time, we must be realistic.”
He attacked critics of the country – an autocratic state that has been found in NGO assessments to be one of the world’s most corrupt – and defended its use of its resources. “Countries should not be blamed [for having oil and gas deposits] and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them. The people need them,” he said.
His words contrasted with pleas from dozens of developing country leaders for urgent action to stem the rising tide of carbon dioxide emissions and rescue them from the consequences.
Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a tiny, low-lying atoll group in the Pacific that is threatened with inundation if temperatures rise much higher, criticised rich countries for telling the poor they must cut greenhouse gas emissions while failing to provide access to the finance that would enable that.
“It is in our blood to know when a tide is turning,” she said. “And on climate, the tide is turning today.”
On Monday the talks had got off to a slow start when officials tried to clear up some technical issues before the leaders arrived on Tuesday. A resolution on the trade of carbon offsets was passed, to the relief of the hosts, but this was criticised by some civil society groups who said it was flawed and had been rushed through.
The talks will continue on Wednesday when more world leaders including Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan will give addresses.