Speaker 1: Hayzier listeners, it's mightily producer of the show. Uckjet is
Speaker 1: still in Baku for COP twenty nine and we'll be
Speaker 1: bringing you more updates from the conference in the week ahead,
Speaker 1: but first we wanted to share the Big Take podcast
Speaker 1: coverage of COP featuring Ukshet's reporting. Enjoy the show and
Speaker 1: do listen back to Zero's recent COP twenty nine episodes,
Speaker 1: including an interview with excell and CEO Darren Woods, recorded
Speaker 1: earlier this week.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 3: The world's most important climate conference kicked off this week
Speaker 3: in Baku, Azerbaijan, and this year it's all about money.
Speaker 3: To go from the system that we have today to
Speaker 3: a less carbon intensive systems is going to require money
Speaker 3: and it's going to be more expensive.
Speaker 2: You can't achieve anything if you don't have finance sects.
Speaker 2: There is a wall of money there, but we just
Speaker 2: need to find a way of deploying it.
Speaker 3: That was Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon, NGO, lawyer
Speaker 3: Jacinda and GK and former UK Minister Alek Sharma. They're
Speaker 3: just a few of over fifty thousand people attending this
Speaker 3: year's UN Climate conference called COP It's an annual meeting
Speaker 3: where delegates from nearly two hundred countries come together to
Speaker 3: address one of the most urgent issues of our time,
Speaker 3: climate change. At last year's COP, members laid the groundwork
Speaker 3: to transition away from fossil fuels and to reach net
Speaker 3: zero by twenty fifty. So this year they need to
Speaker 3: decide who's going to pay for that transition.
Speaker 2: It's labeled the finance COP.
Speaker 3: Akshat Rothi is a senior climate reporter for Bloomberg and
Speaker 3: the host of the Zero podcast. This is the fourth
Speaker 3: COP he's attended, but Akshat says the stakes of this
Speaker 3: year's talks feel even higher than usual. And that's not
Speaker 3: just because we're set to blow past the one point
Speaker 3: five degree celsius temperatureized target outlined in the Paris Agreement,
Speaker 3: because twenty twenty four is said to be the hottest
Speaker 3: year on record, or because the financial commitment needed to
Speaker 3: decarbonize could be as much as trillions of dollars.
Speaker 2: It's because, on top of all that, there is a
Speaker 2: Trump cloud somewhere in the sky all the time during
Speaker 2: these negotiations.
Speaker 3: Trump has been an antagonist to environmental efforts. During his
Speaker 3: first term, he pulled the US out of the Paris
Speaker 3: Climate Accords, and he's made no secret about his feelings
Speaker 3: on fossil fuels. We have more liquid gold, well, I
Speaker 3: guess we have more liquid gold than any country in
Speaker 3: the world, more than Saudi Arabia, we have more than Russia.
Speaker 3: It's this kind of rhetoric that has delegates concerned and
Speaker 3: wondering what a second Trump presidency means for the US's
Speaker 3: commitment to climate goals and to the Earth's future. This
Speaker 3: is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder
Speaker 3: today on the show inside COP twenty nine after a
Speaker 3: Trump win, how the world will calculate the cost of
Speaker 3: fighting climate change and decide who's footing the bill. Okshot
Speaker 3: Rathi has been on the ground in Baku since COP
Speaker 3: twenty nine kicked off there earlier this week. He's trying
Speaker 3: to get the pulse on how negotiations over climate financing
Speaker 3: are going and how global tensions are influencing the talks.
Speaker 3: So he's speaking to people there from vegan activists.
Speaker 2: He are here to promote veganism because this is the
Speaker 2: solution for global army.
Speaker 3: Your excellences to Muktar Babayev, The oil executive who's currently
Speaker 3: the president of COP.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Azerbaijan.
Speaker 2: Welcome to COP twenty nine.
Speaker 3: That's Babayev at CoP's opening ceremony in his home country
Speaker 3: of Azerbaijan, a location that's been raising some eyebrows.
Speaker 2: Azerbaijan is a petro state. Ninety percent of its exports
Speaker 2: are oil and gas. Isn't the attention, certainly, but it's
Speaker 2: also part of the process. You warned even the countries
Speaker 2: that have fossil fuels to be a part of climate
Speaker 2: action because it's a global problem in every country has
Speaker 2: to do its bit.
Speaker 3: The negotiations happening at this year's COP revolve around what
Speaker 3: responsibility the country's richest economies have to help smaller economies
Speaker 3: adapt to a warming world. And by the time COP
Speaker 3: twenty nine is over, there are two main things that
Speaker 3: delegates need to decide.
Speaker 2: The first one is called Article six, and it's about
Speaker 2: creating a carbon market where say a country like Indonesia,
Speaker 2: which has a lot of forests, could be producing carbon
Speaker 2: credits and be selling them to Norway, which produces a
Speaker 2: lot of oil and has emissions that would allow money
Speaker 2: to go to Indonesia, which it could use to try
Speaker 2: and move its energy transition faster. That got signed off
Speaker 2: at least half of it on the very first day
Speaker 2: of COP and maybe countries and companies will start to
Speaker 2: buy carbon credits from these countries.
Speaker 3: Just after COP members finalize some of the rules for
Speaker 3: international carbon trading and made plans to launch a UN
Speaker 3: backed carbon market, Saudi Arabia launched its own carbon trading market,
Speaker 3: capitalizing on the new opportunity.
Speaker 2: The second thing, which is a much harder thing, it's
Speaker 2: called the new collective quantified Goal on Climate finance. Sorry,
Speaker 2: it's a big phrase, but that's the official phrase, and
Speaker 2: all it means is what will rich countries contribute towards
Speaker 2: helping poor countries reduce emissions adapt to the warming that's
Speaker 2: already been caused. Because without that money, those countries could
Speaker 2: not develop as much renewable energy and might end up
Speaker 2: fossil fuels, which will exacerbate the problem. And the number,
Speaker 2: which is going to be in the hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars a trillions of dollars, is what is at
Speaker 2: the heart of the contention over the two.
Speaker 3: Week period, Well, how do they decide how much responsibility
Speaker 3: each country has to shoulder?
Speaker 2: There is no simple math here. It's not like you
Speaker 2: put out a tennis permissions so you are going to
Speaker 2: have to pay so much money. It is very much
Speaker 2: the hard work of diplomacy. You look at the science,
Speaker 2: you say, clearly, rich countries have done the most. Now
Speaker 2: you should start to show how you can help poor
Speaker 2: countries manage that. Rich countries will say, look, we are
Speaker 2: having problems back at home, there's a cost of living crisis.
Speaker 2: Whatever the reasons might be, those countries will have to
Speaker 2: make those excuses, and then there will be a fight.
Speaker 2: And that fight actually happens in like really boring text,
Speaker 2: legal text, but boring texts for you know, poets or
Speaker 2: literature readers, but very important text. And the final thing
Speaker 2: is this is a very weird experiment because the cop
Speaker 2: process only works by consensus. That means all countries, not
Speaker 2: a single country can disagree. All countries have to agree.
Speaker 2: Only then you get a deal at the end.
Speaker 3: What about the private sector? How much of the responsibility
Speaker 3: will they take on.
Speaker 2: The private sector is not directly involved in these negotiations.
Speaker 2: It's very much a un process. But because the energy
Speaker 2: transition and all these climate goals is trillions of dollars
Speaker 2: of investments annually. There is no way that happens without
Speaker 2: the private sector participating. That's why at every cop we
Speaker 2: get not just government ministers but also company CEOs coming.
Speaker 2: I spoke to the CEO of EGXON earlier this week,
Speaker 2: and he very much made the case that the US
Speaker 2: should remain in the Paris Agreement, that Donald Trump should
Speaker 2: keep the Inflation Reduction Act because for companies, it is
Speaker 2: really important that the policies that governments set are stable,
Speaker 2: are acceptable, and they have business certainty to go down
Speaker 2: this energy transition. So private sector doesn't play a direct role,
Speaker 2: but it plays a central role in delivering the goals.
Speaker 2: The interaction between the two is always fascinating to watch.
Speaker 3: Just how much money is needed to address climate change?
Speaker 3: Is that a number you can share and quantify.
Speaker 2: Yes, that number has been quantified, and there are estimates
Speaker 2: of various kinds. So something like three trillion to five
Speaker 2: trillion dollars is roughly the number that multiple estimates come to.
Speaker 2: And that is investments all countries have to make towards
Speaker 2: just reducing emissions. And today we make about two trillion
Speaker 2: of that investment in clean energy. But there's a second
Speaker 2: aspect to spending money which is adapting to the warming
Speaker 2: that's already been caused. There's already heat waves of extreme
Speaker 2: nature happening. There is sea level rise happening. We've seen
Speaker 2: floods in places like Spain very recently. There are droughts
Speaker 2: in other regions, and those all have money figures attached
Speaker 2: from the impacts. But there could be projects you could bill,
Speaker 2: like managing the flow of a river or a sea wall,
Speaker 2: that would allow you to avoid the impacts coming your way.
Speaker 2: And that number can be in the hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars every year. So all of it it is
Speaker 2: a large sum, but it is always worth remembering if
Speaker 2: we don't spend this money now, we will have to
Speaker 2: spend even greater sums dealing with climate impacts.
Speaker 3: After the break, the Trump question how the US's president
Speaker 3: elect could get in the way of global climate progress
Speaker 3: at Future Cops and Beyond at COP twenty nine in Azerbajean.
Speaker 3: This week, Bloomberg Senior climate reporter Akshat Rathi has been
Speaker 3: reporting on how negotiations over the future of climate financing
Speaker 3: are going, but halfway through the ten day conference, there
Speaker 3: are still a lot of unknowns one of the biggest
Speaker 3: is how the US presidential election might influence things. So akshat,
Speaker 3: there's still this big shadow hanging over cop and that
Speaker 3: is Donald Trump. Can you tell us more about how
Speaker 3: his leadership of the US might impact the country's participation
Speaker 3: in future cops in needing these eventual commitments.
Speaker 2: In the past, Donald Trump pulled the US out of
Speaker 2: the Paris Agreement, but he wasn't able to do very
Speaker 2: much with it because there was a delay baked in.
Speaker 2: By the time he left, Joe Biden had been elected.
Speaker 2: This time around, when Donald Trump decides the US is leaving,
Speaker 2: it'll take one year for the US to leave, and
Speaker 2: then the US cannot directly participate in negotiations and influence
Speaker 2: the outcomes until perhaps a future president wants to join.
Speaker 2: The other thing that Donald Trump can do is start
Speaker 2: to squeeze sources of finance that go towards climate, both
Speaker 2: domestically through things like cutting down financing for clean energy
Speaker 2: through the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, or globally through
Speaker 2: multilateral development banks where the US is the largest shareholder,
Speaker 2: and it could give a mandate to these banks that
Speaker 2: they cannot anymore invest in climate. He could also take
Speaker 2: money away from the UN system, which is something he
Speaker 2: has attempted to do in the past. And the United
Speaker 2: Nations is a very important body, but it only works
Speaker 2: because all countries put in their contribution towards it, and
Speaker 2: the US contributes almost the fifth of its budget. There
Speaker 2: is also a risk that Trump might pull the US
Speaker 2: out of the underlying climate treaty altogether.
Speaker 3: Part of the point of COP is that all of
Speaker 3: these countries come together and have the shared commitment. If
Speaker 3: the world's largest economy down the line is no longer
Speaker 3: interested in fighting climate change, and if the US will
Speaker 3: no longer be a leader on this, where does that
Speaker 3: leave global efforts like COP.
Speaker 2: Look, there is no way to say it is a
Speaker 2: good thing. The US has a responsibility as the world's
Speaker 2: largest historical emitter and as the current second largest emitter.
Speaker 2: If the US doesn't meet its responsibility, other countries will
Speaker 2: feel like this might get a free pass. But then
Speaker 2: you look at what happened when the US pulled out
Speaker 2: of the Paris Agreement the first time. No other country left,
Speaker 2: and that's because the energy transition is one that is
Speaker 2: better when done collaboratively.
Speaker 3: It's also because more countries are looking at the energy
Speaker 3: transition as a good investment.
Speaker 2: The price of clean energy has come down, the desire
Speaker 2: for countries to create competitive industries that would build electric
Speaker 2: cars or solar panels has grown, and so the US leaving.
Speaker 2: As Ali Zaidi, who's then National Climate Advisor to President Biden,
Speaker 2: told us, the US will actually fall behind countries like
Speaker 2: China and India in the very technologies of the twenty
Speaker 2: first century, and that could actually be economic harm to
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 3: It would be economic malpractice to put us back in
Speaker 3: the position we were four years ago, where we're in
Speaker 3: a massive deficit in the leadership of these technologies.
Speaker 2: And so right now we don't hear as if any
Speaker 2: other country is following the footsteps that the US might
Speaker 2: be about to take. But there is a risk that
Speaker 2: once the largest economy leaves, somebody might join the leaving party.
Speaker 3: Akshat says that even at this tenuous moment for cop
Speaker 3: and for the planet, there are some things bringing climate
Speaker 3: activists hope.
Speaker 2: Well, the biggest hope comes from China, which is a
Speaker 2: weird thing to think about because China is currently the
Speaker 2: largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, has the most cold
Speaker 2: power plants in the world and produces almost thirty percent
Speaker 2: of planet warming emissions, and yet it is also the
Speaker 2: country that is deploying more clean energy than the rest
Speaker 2: of the world combined. But I also get hope from
Speaker 2: other countries, countries like India and Brazil and even Kenya,
Speaker 2: smaller economies that see the potential for building clean energy
Speaker 2: as the route to prosperity, not just because it will
Speaker 2: help reduce climate change, but also because they will find
Speaker 2: ways to turn that clean energy into economic growth that
Speaker 2: will bring prosperity to their own people. And that perhaps
Speaker 2: is the most hopeful note you can take when we
Speaker 2: are almost certainly going to be facing many more and
Speaker 2: more intense climate impacts over the next year.
Speaker 3: And actually we've also been circling some of the challenges
Speaker 3: facing COP, the tensions that are playing out beneath the surface,
Speaker 3: the disappointments, or the knowledge that more work has to
Speaker 3: be done after pass COPS. So I guess I'm just curious,
Speaker 3: how much does this conference matter? Why is it important
Speaker 3: to keep convening every year and hashing this out.
Speaker 2: Well, climate change is a global problem. It affects every
Speaker 2: country everywhere. It is caused by every country everywhere, just
Speaker 2: not proportionally because greenhouse gas emissions, once emitted, go into
Speaker 2: the atmosphere and stay there, and thus there has to
Speaker 2: be a global forum to address a global challenge. And
Speaker 2: as frustrating as cops are, as long as cops are,
Speaker 2: I find the event one of hope because it forces
Speaker 2: all these people to come together. When I walk through
Speaker 2: the COP venue, I see people wearing all sorts of dresses,
Speaker 2: speaking all sorts of languages, and there is no other
Speaker 2: place on Earth that I think you can experience that
Speaker 2: level of diversity and that level of realization that we
Speaker 2: are all in it together.
Speaker 3: COP twenty nine officially ends on November twenty second, but
Speaker 3: it could take longer to reach a deal. This is
Speaker 3: the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. For
Speaker 3: further coverage of COP twenty nine and more reporting from
Speaker 3: akshat head to Bloomberg dot com or the zero podcast feed,
Speaker 3: where you can also hear Okshot's interview with Exon CEO
Speaker 3: Darren Woods. This episode was produced by Jessica Beck and
Speaker 3: Adrianna Tapia, who also BacT check this episode. It was
Speaker 3: mixed by Alex Suguiera. It was edited by Stacy Vannicksmith.
Speaker 3: And Emily Buso. Special thanks to Mithalye Rau. Our senior
Speaker 3: producer is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
Speaker 3: Our executive producer is Nicole Beieamster bor Sage Bauman is
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make
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Speaker 3: for listening. We'll be back next week.