The top US representative to COP29 defended his country’s progress in cutting planet-warming carbon emissions on Monday, insisting that much of it will endure despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to retreat from the fight against global warming.
Yet John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, also struck an apologetic tone at the start of the United Nations COP29 summit in Azerbaijan. The expected pullback by the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, he acknowledged, comes even “as the dangers we face grow ever-more catastrophic.”