Jason P. Dinh

I’m curious what the vibe has been like in Baku. From the outside looking in, the days before the conference didn’t feel great. Papua New Guinea said they weren’t coming because they felt COP was “a total waste of time.” Then, the CEO of COP29 was filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the conference, and the president of Azerbaijan called oil and gas a “gift from God.” I’m wondering if that energy has percolated throughout the conference in Baku.

Dan Jasper

There has definitely been an exhaustion with all this. None of this is new, so it’s not a total surprise. But at the same time, I don’t see anybody running around here saying the end is nigh—people are still pushing on.

I think there are surface-level emotions of frustration and exhaustion, but there’s also an undercurrent from civil society of dogged determination. I’ve been really impressed by this unwillingness to back down. So while it’s frustrating on the higher level, it’s not eating away at people’s ability to focus here.

Jason

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that this is happening weeks after the U.S. election. It seems like the specter of Donald Trump, who has said he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement again, looms large. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said if the U.S. leaves, it could “cripple” the rest of the Paris goals, and the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States said the U.S. abdicating its climate obligations is of “grave, grave concern.” And already, Argentina pulled out of negotiations after their far-right president Javier Milei spoke with Trump. I’m wondering how the U.S. election result has influenced the talks in Baku, and I’m also interested in the converse—how have these talks forged on despite what happened in the U.S.?

Dan

I think you’re right to point to both sides. On one hand, there is an urgency here, especially to get this new climate finance goal finished before the U.S. does whatever it does. There’s certainly an attack on the multilateral aspect of all this. But at the same time, 198 countries are party to UNFCCC. I would be lying if I didn’t wonder if the U.S. exiting the scene might actually help multilateral cooperation move forward in a lot of ways. 

The U.S. is not the most constructive actor here. I see it time and time again. It’s frustrating, almost embarrassing, as a citizen, to watch how the U.S. engages in and obstructs these platforms. I think I’ve been really surprised at how little Donald Trump has come up. For American citizens, it’s top of mind, but other folks might just be getting used to this. It’s not ideal that the U.S. could be leaving, and it’s definitely going to be difficult for them to get back in, but at the same time, they’ve been pulling this whole effort back for a long time now—so it’s possible that things can get done quicker without the U.S. I hate to say it, but it’s true.

Jason

I want to dig into the nitty-gritty of what’s happened so far. We saw a pretty quick development on day one, as a 12-person supervisory board approved a new set of rules on carbon markets—systems where nations or businesses can buy carbon credits that “offset” their greenhouse gas emissions. There was quite a bit of criticism from climate advocates, both in terms of the process of how those rules were passed, and potential loopholes left in the rules themselves. Could you walk us through the controversy here? 

Dan

It’s a good question, and I will say that I’m not a carbon market specialist, but I can give you insight from what I’ve seen. It is interesting and disappointing how this played out. They gaveled it through potentially to show that they got results from this year’s COP, because this COP has been thrown into question. The key deliverable here is the new climate finance goal, and it’s unclear whether or not they’ll be able to do that. Getting these carbon market rules through gives them at least one deliverable. 

But what happened was they passed this at the opening, so there wasn’t much room for discussion. Those standards that they passed had already been rejected by subsidiary bodies twice before. The way that they passed it, however, was through the Paris Agreement, rather than COP. That brings up a really interesting procedural and legal question. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve studied international law, and I’ve worked at the U.N. It’s always been my understanding that COP is the foremost and premier decision-making body for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But what we have now is developed countries making the argument that the Paris Agreement and COP are on equal footing. I’ve never heard that argument before. 

It leaves us in this ambiguous place. Nobody’s clear now on the procedures, but these rules are out there. Do we just have to obey, or is there a way to challenge them? I don’t know that that’s clear at this stage, but I think it really undermined trust in the entire process when developed countries switched the rules around when it was convenient for them. 

Jason

The big topic of the conference is money. Developing nations are asking for a goal of about $1 trillion annually in climate financing, but delegates are still fighting over the details—whether only developed countries must pay, what counts as finance, what years are covered, and more. It sounds like none of that is settled, right? 

Dan

Yeah, that’s right. There’s draft text. But still, I think all of these key elements are missing from it, as far as I understand it.

Jason

There’s an ambitious target of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035, and the developing nations have insisted that this should come from rich nations in the form of public grants that won’t put vulnerable nations into further debt. Do you think that that is a reasonable landing spot, or do you think we’re going to fall short of those lofty goals?

Dan

I hate to say it, but I don’t know that we’ll be able to get pure grant-based funding for all of this. I think we need it. And I think the low-income countries are correct—we can’t give out even concessional loans on this, because we’re in a situation where these countries are now taking away from their health and education budgets just to pay the interest on these climate finance loans. I mean, it’s pure insanity. 

It’s a reasonable ask, but is it where we’re going to land? I don’t know. The developed countries seem so adamant in making this kind of an investment goal and trying to bring in the private sector that I really am nervous about the quality of the money that will flow in. There’s been enough discussion where I’m guessing that there will be some nod to grant-based financing. But at the same time, it’s probably going to be a layered goal. It’ll probably be something like a core commitment that countries are making and then something aspirational that comes from the private sector. So you’re not going to get rid of loans altogether. Even though we really need that, I just don’t think developed countries are willing to back down.

Jason

Is there a world where we don’t reach an agreement on climate finance goals at this COP?

Dan

Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility, and in that case, I think the discussion will probably get kicked to places like G7 or Bonn. We’ve seen some items kicked to Bonn already. But I will say, I don’t think the presidency wants that. My guess is that something will get through.

Jason

In the background, there have been discussions about the new nationally determined contributions, or NDCs—climate action plans that must be updated early next year, and which will last until 2035. A UNEP report from last month said that these new NDCs needed to make a “quantum leap” of ambition to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius of warming. And several countries have announced NDCs since COP started, to mixed reviews. The U.K. announced ambitious plans to cut emissions by 81% compared to 1990 by 2035, which seemed to be universally praised. Brazil committed to cutting emissions by two-third by 2035 compared to 2005, which some groups have called insufficient. And the UAE’s plans have been accused of being flat-out greenwashing. Are these on the scale of a “quantum leap” in ambition we need to see? And what do they foretell about the plans yet to be announced? 

Dan

I have to be honest, I haven’t read these new NDCs, but I’ll say that, given that we only have a couple of them, it’s really difficult to tell what they’ll look like collectively. It’s encouraging to see the UK and their commitment to 81%. But at the same time, we’re already getting a sense of the spectrum that we’ll probably see. Some will be greenwashing, some will be in the middle, and some aspirational. I don’t know that we’ll get the quantum leap, but UNEP is right in the fact that we do need it. 

Jason

On Friday, a group of COP veterans, including Ban Ki-moon, Christiana Figueres, and Mary Robinson, said that we need to transform how COP operates because the current system isn’t working. They propose, among other things, downsizing meeting, having them more frequently, and building a system that is able to act in line with the best climate science. Do you think COP needs to fundamentally change to keep up with the speed and scale of climate change, and have you seen anything at COP29 that has influenced your thinking about these reforms? 

Dan

We absolutely need reform. There’s no question in my mind. Sitting in these negotiations reminds you of being in school—this is like a group assignment from hell. We do not have time to be arguing on tracked changes in Google Docs or Word documents. I mean, that’s really what’s taking place. You have moments where big delegations didn’t receive the newest draft, or they don’t see the color in the tracked changes, so they don’t know what we’re talking about. We don’t have that kind of time. So, I think that the reforms that were put forward in the letter are really smart. I think Al Gore’s suggestion of a two-thirds vote for approval is a smart idea. I would even take it a little bit further in terms of institutional change. 

I don’t know if you’ve read the book, The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s a piece of fiction, but he’s known for diving into details and extrapolating from that what could happen. In the book, he says that the subsidiary bodies of the U.N. are made permanent, and that is a brilliant idea. I don’t know why nobody’s discussing this, because we need a permanent body to have these conversations. To shove them all into two weeks is ridiculous. I mean, you can hear my voice. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I got sick. I know delegates got sick. We’re underfed and overcaffeinated. How can we make decisions on the biggest issue in the world like this?

There’s no doubt in my mind we need reform. We’re not talking about the science enough. My job here is to bring some of the science, but the room for that is minimal. We’re talking about commas and phrases in text documents. It’s time to get to implementation, and we’re not gonna be able to do that unless we reform this process. I think that we need to build the drumbeat to really lay out some more specific reform measures, and I’m looking forward to having conversations with people at UNFCCC about this.