Salt water creeping up Delaware River in worrying sign for big fresh water source. Source of Philadelphia’s drinking water sees salt line pushed closer to city by drought and sea level rise

 

The Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania on Monday. Photograph: Mike Catalini/AP

 

Salty ocean water is creeping up the Delaware River, the source for much of the drinking water for Philadelphia and millions of others, brought on by drought conditions and sea level rise, and prompting officials to tap reservoirs to push the un-potable tide back downstream.

Officials say drinking water is not imminently at risk, but they are monitoring the effects of the drought on the river and studying options for the future in case further droughts sap the area, amid the climate crisis.

The salt front or salt line is where salt water from the ocean and freshwater meet in the river. That boundary is typically somewhere around Wilmington, Delaware, but the recent drought in the north-east has pushed it about 20 miles (32km) north, around Philadelphia international airport.

The farther the line moves upstream, the closer it gets to drinking water intakes, which officials have worked for decades to avoid.

 

The Delaware River provides drinking water for some 14 million people, including most of Philadelphia but also New Jersey and New York. Still, the line is south of those intakes and below the level it traveled in the 1960s during record drought conditions.

Desalination of saltwater is costly, energy intensive and can create new issues like where to dispose of the highly concentrated salt brine pulled from the water. It is also not a feasible option, officials say.

“There are alternative sources, but we don’t want to be trucking in bottled water for people,” said Amy Shallcross, the water resource operations manager at the Delaware River basin commission. “We get nervous when it starts to get up near Philadelphia. It’s only 18 miles right now from the drinking water intakes. And sometimes it can shoot upstream really quickly.”

Officials control the salt line by releasing water from two reservoirs, which pushes the front downriver. The commission monitors the flow at Trenton, which is the furthest upstream point affected by the tide. The flow officials target is roughly equivalent to the amount of water in two Olympic-sized swimming pools flowing by per minute. If the rate dips below that, then more water is released.

The salt front last reached roughly where it is now in 2016 during another drought, officials said.

The Delaware River basin is not alone in fending off intruding saltwater, which is exacerbated by rising sea levels and dredged riverbeds to aid navigation, Shallcross said. The Mississippi River similarly saw what officials call a “salt wedge” in 2023, resulting in heightening underwater levees and bringing in drinking water.

A rainless start to fall brought on a drought in parts of the north-east, including the Delaware’s basin. The river needs about an inch of rain a week for a time to move the line back to its normal location, Shallcross said.

The basin commission is studying the impact of the climate crisis on water resources.

Water managers are starting to consider more serious conservation measures as well. “I would say the east is not water-rich, we’re water adequate, and we need to recognize that,” she said.

 

Saiba qual é o país que desponta como liderança mundial em ações climáticas. E se aproxima do Brasil

 

Manifestação contra combustíveis fósseis em Londres em 16 de novembro Foto: Benjamin Cremel/AFP

 

Uma das poucas nações-ricas que enviou seu principal chefe de estado à COP-29, Reino Unido quer ‘liderar pelo exemplo’ e se tornar ‘super potência’ de energia limpa; entenda

 

Por Priscila Mengue

 

 

ENVIADA ESPECIAL A BAKU - Em um ano em que o maior evento sobre mudanças climáticas do mundo ficou esvaziado de grandes lideranças mundiais, o berço da Revolução Industrial enviou o seu time principal: o premiê e o alto escalão de ministros de secretariados chave. Também foi um dos poucos a apresentar antecipadamente a nova meta de redução de emissões de gases do efeito estufa, assim como foi convidado pela presidência da Cúpula do Clima deste ano (COP-29) para intermediar as demandas dos países ricos.

Não se trata aqui de França, Alemanha ou outro forte integrante da União Europeia. Mas, sim, do Reino Unido, que utilizou largamente os termos “liderança” e “empregos verdes” ao longo de toda a conferência da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU), descrevendo-se como futura superpotência de energia limpa.

A mudança também é marcada pelo novo governo britânico. Diferentemente do seu antecessor, Rishi Sunak — político conservador criticado por liberar a exploração de combustíveis fósseis no Mar do Norte — Keir Starmer assumiu como primeiro-ministro, em julho, com uma sucessão de ações e anúncios em resposta à crise climática.

 

Essa lista inclui, dentre outras medidas, o fechamento da última mina de carvão do país, a proibição de novos poços de exploração de petróleo, a liberação de usinas de energia eólica terrestres, a criação de uma estatal de energia limpa, o lançamento de projetos de captura de carbono, investimentos em hidrogênio verde e a ampliação de incentivos para energias renováveis.

Em seu discurso a outros representantes de nações, na COP, Starmer ressaltou que centenas de milhares de britânicos poderão ser atingidos por inundações, maior instabilidade econômica e insegurança nacional caso o aquecimento global ultrapasse os 1,5ºC. Encerrou dizendo que “o Reino Unido liderará o caminho, irá liderar a Grã-Bretanha e o mundo para um futuro mais limpo, mais seguro e mais próspero para todos”.

A declaração pública também mencionou a meta de redução de emissões, de 81% até 2035 em relação aos números de 1990. A promessa anterior, de 2021, era de 78%.

A proposta foi elogiada por uma parte das organizações locais, como WWF-UK e WRI, por seguir a indicação do conselho especializado do país e ser “um exemplo de liderança”. Embora tenha sido anunciada, a meta (NDC na sigla em inglês) ainda será formalmente detalhada até o ano que vem.

 

Com o resultado criticado da COP-29, não apenas pelo valor de financiamento climático definido, mas também pelas reclamações oficiais de diversos países em desenvolvimento (como Chile, Índia e Bolívia) de que não foram ouvidos adequadamente, a própria efetividade de que lideranças ambientais consigam “liderar pelo exemplo” foi posta em xeque. Nesse cenário, o Reino Unido foi questionado por uma parte das organizações ambientais, até por não ter se posicionado tão enfaticamente como o Canadá, por exemplo.

Após a decisão, o secretário de Segurança Energética e Net Zero britânico, Ed Miliband, declarou que foi um “crítico acordo de última hora para o clima”. “Não é tudo o que nós ou outros queríamos, mas é um passo em frente para todos nós”, disse.

Premiê do Reino Unido (Keir Starmer) à esquerda, ao lado da primeira-ministra de Barbados (Mia Mottley) e da maior autoridade de clima da ONU (Simon Stiell) durante a COP-29 Foto: Peter Dejong/AP

 

Além disso, na quinta-feira, 21, o Reino Unido participou de um evento da Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (BOGA), aliança de países pela extinção da produção dos combustíveis fósseis, durante evento na Cúpula do Clima. O país também divulgou um acordo de cooperação com os Estados Unidos nesta COP, para desenvolvimento de energia nuclear.

O país tem sofrido com ondas de calor, tempestades, enchentes, queimadas, grandes nevascas e outros extremos climáticos. Por suas características territoriais, também está especialmente vulnerável ao avanço e outras alterações do mar.

No ano passado, por exemplo, alguns trechos do Oceano Atlântico no entorno do Reino Unido e da Irlanda foram impactados por uma onda de calor marinha, classificada como extrema e, em alguns lugares, “além do extremo”, com a temperatura do mar cerca de 5ºC acima da média, como destacou o mais recente relatório da Organização Meteorológica Mundial, veiculado no início de 2024.

Até mesmo a família real tem buscado se associar à agenda climática. O rei Charles e o príncipe William participaram de eventos recentes sobre essa temática.

Ademais, a própria página oficial da monarquia britânica tem ressaltado que Charles tem alertado sobre os perigos da poluição por plásticos desde os anos 1970, quando tinha 21 anos. Diferentemente do ano passado, contudo, ele não foi à COP de Baku.

 

Aproximação com o Brasil

Os pavilhões do Brasil e do Reino Unido estavam lado a lado durante a COP-29. Para além da vizinhança de espaços onde realizaram dezenas de atividades, ambos tiveram reuniões bilaterais, ações conjuntas e diversas aproximações antes e durante a conferência.

Lula com o premiê britânico durante cúpula do G-20 Foto: Ricardo Stuckert/Presidência do Brasil

 Ao Estadão, a representante especial de clima do Reino Unido na COP-29, Rachel Kyte, confirmou a aproximação entre os dois países. “O Brasil é efetivamente um líder. E estamos juntos na nossa ambição”, disse. “Nós vamos ajudar o Brasil a fazer a COP que precisamos”, afirmou. A declaração ocorreu em um contexto de dificuldades de avanço nas negociações da conferência atual, realizada em Baku, no Azerbaijão.

 Sede da COP-26, de Glasgow, o país se colocou à disposição para passar experiência para o Brasil, que será o anfitrião do evento no ano que vem, em Belém. A cúpula de 2025 tem grande expectativa entre lideranças e ambientalistas, assim como pelo simbolismo de ser realizada em um estado amazônico.

 

Para Stela Herschmann, especialista em política climática do Observatório do Clima, a postura britânica ao estimular propostas mais ambiciosas de outros países na preparação da COP-26 pode inspirar o Brasil. “Viajaram o mundo inteiro fazendo ‘NDC diplomacy’ (meta de redução de emissões, cuja nova deverá ser entregue no ano que vem), instigando as partes a fazerem o seu melhor”, aponta.

Na Cúpula do G-20, no Rio, o premiê britânico e o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva se encontraram pela segunda vez neste ano. O desenvolvimento econômico sustentável e o combate às mudanças climáticas estiveram entre os principais temas tratados em ambos os encontros.

Primeiro-ministro do Reino Unido, Keir Starmer, durante discurso na COP-29 Foto: Rafiq Maqbool/AP

 

No encontro mais recente, nesta semana, os dois países lançaram juntos a Aliança Global de Energia Limpa. O grupo também é formado por França, Noruega, Chile, Colômbia, Tanzânia, Emirados Árabes Unidos e Alemanha. O premiê britânico ainda teve uma série de agendas no País.

Além disso, o Brasil teve atividades variadas com representantes do Reino Unido na COP-29. No penúltimo dia do evento, por exemplo, a ministra do Meio Ambiente, Marina Silva, teve reuniões bilaterais com apenas quatro representantes de governo. Dentre eles, estava o secretário de Segurança Energética e Net Zero do Reino Unido, Ed Miliband.

 

Já um painel com representantes de ambos os países discutiu as NDCs anunciadas por ambos nesta COP (apenas Emirados Árabes Unidos também apresentou). Na ocasião, a secretária de Mudança do Clima do Brasil, Ana Toni, reafirmou a aproximação dos dois países. “O Brasil e, tenho certeza, o Reino Unido também, quer liderar pelo exemplo”, disse.

Pavilhão do Reino Unido e do Brasil foram vizinhos nesta COP Foto: Priscila Mengue/Estadão

 

Professor de finanças da Fecap e da Unifesp e pesquisador de relações internacionais, Ahmed Sameer El Khatib avalia que os dois países têm se aproximado nos últimos anos, especialmente após o Brexit e a eleição de Lula.

O pesquisador avalia que a postura do Reino Unido nesta COP contrasta com outras potências mundiais, como Alemanha e Estados Unidos, que não foram representadas por chefes de estado. “Sugerindo uma oportunidade para o Reino Unido reafirmar sua influência na agenda climática global”, completa.

“Em resumo, a relação entre Brasil e Reino Unido está em um momento de renovação. A agenda ambiental britânica se alinha com as prioridades do governo brasileiro, criando oportunidades para parcerias significativas”, conclui.

O que dizem especialistas britânicos?

Consultora política sênior do Greenpeace Reino Unido, Rebecca Newsom aponta que o partido do atual premiê teve a campanha marcada pela defesa de um programa de transição climática, envolvendo principalmente energia e possibilidade de cortes de gastos para a população. “Temos alguns passos na direção correta a se tomar, mas realmente mudou a direção”, diz.

Manifestação recente em Londres Foto: Benjamin Cremel/AFP

 

Nesse aspecto, considera positiva a sinalização com a nova NDC e o discurso enfático na COP-29. Para ela, contudo, diante da responsabilidade histórica britânica como berço da Revolução Industrial, ainda mais poderia ser feito.

Dentre novas medidas que poderiam ser tomadas, a ambientalista menciona maior investimento na proteção da biodiversidade e restrição da pesca industrial, assim como significativo financiamento público para países em desenvolvimento. “O Reino Unido tem uma forte responsabilidade histórica, e isso significa que precisa avançar e abrir caminhos”, defende.

 

Consultora de diplomacia climática, Alexandra Scott avalia que, em períodos mais recentes, o Reino Unido tem um histórico significativo de ações climáticas no âmbito nacional. Nesse caso, menciona impostos de carbono e reduções de emissões. Há quatro anos, uma decisão judicial no país também virou notícia mundial por reconhecer a poluição do ar como uma das causas da morte de uma criança londrina.

“É o lugar de nascimento da Revolução Industrial, onde começou a disparada das emissões de carbono, que estão causando a crise”, avalia. Para ela, a aproximação de Brasil e Reino Unido na política climática pode ser “game-changer”. “Há uma grande chance dos dois países realmente liderarem essa ambição climática”, diz.

Já a diretora executiva do Climate Action Network Reino Unido (CAN-UK), Catherine Pettengell, destaca que o atual governo está há poucos meses no poder, mas reconhece que houve uma mudança significativa no discurso e uma clara intenção de priorizar ações climáticas nacional e internacionalmente.

“Há razões para ser otimista”, considera. Também menciona que o país cumpriu o seu dever ao trazer as principais lideranças para a COP.

Ela pondera, contudo, que há muito ainda a ser feito, inclusive em relação a países em desenvolvimento, assim como na retomada de políticas de financiamento climático enfraquecidas no governo anterior. “O Reino Unido tem responsabilidade e capacidade para avançar mais e rapidamente e prover mais recursos para o Sul Global agir contra as mudanças climáticas”, completa.

Além disso, há o entendimento de que o Reino Unido não cumpriu tudo o que prometeu em metas recentes e que precisa fazer mais. Em julho, mês da troca de premiê, o Climate Change Committee (que orienta decisões do governo) apontou que foi cumprido apenas um terço das reduções de emissões necessárias para que se atingisse a meta determinada até 2030. Por outro lado, reconheceu que os índices estavam com um terço do que era a média de 1990.

*A repórter viajou a convite do Instituto Clima e Sociedade

 

‘Catastrophic’ marine heatwaves are killing sealife and causing mass disruption to UK fisheries

 

Temperature rises in coastal seawater are affecting marine habitats and seafood production. Photograph: eye35.pix/Alamy

 Targeted research must be launched urgently to save sea creatures and plant life, oceanography centre warns

 

Robin McKie Science editor

Britain is facing a future of increasingly catastrophic marine heatwaves that could destroy shellfish colonies and fisheries and have devastating impacts on communities around the coast of the UK.

That is the stark conclusion of a new report by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), based in Southampton, which is pressing for the launch of a targeted research programme as a matter of urgency to investigate how sudden temperature rises in coastal seawater could affect marine habitats and seafood production in the UK.

Across the planet marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as rising fossil fuel emissions force up atmospheric temperatures across the globe, causing the sea to warm.

These events not only disrupt shellfish colonies and fisheries, but also cause the bleaching of coral reefs, the spread of harmful algal blooms, the destruction of seagrass meadows, and mass mortality of fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

 

“Marine heatwaves have catastrophic impacts and we need to be prepared for them. At present, we are not and that position needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency,” said Dr Zoe Jacobs, the lead author of the NOC report, Marine heatwaves and cold spells in the Northeast Atlantic: what should the UK be prepared for?

“We need to know how these marine heatwaves are going to affect plants and animals that live in the sea and find ways to protect them, as well as the coastal communities that depend on them.”

Marine heatwaves are also causing the mass mortality of seabirds. Photograph: Jeroen van Wijk/Alamy

 

In early summer 2023 Britain was engulfed in a marine heatwave in which major rises in the temperature of sea water were experienced off the north-east coast of England and off the west of Ireland. For more than two weeks, the sea in these regions was around five degrees above normal temperatures, smashing records for late spring and early summer. The Met Office reported that the North Sea and north Atlantic experienced higher temperatures at the same time, with sea temperatures reaching an all-time high, according to records that date back to 1850.

As global temperature continues to soar, scientists believe it is inevitable that many more of these record-breaking heatwaves will affect water around Britain and Ireland in the near future, with the report by the NOC highlighting three main areas of concern.

One is in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland, one is in the North Sea off northern England and Scotland, and the last is off the coast of south-east England. “These regions are areas where marine heatwaves can coincide with extremely low oxygen concentrations in the water, which makes them especially vulnerable. It’s like a double whammy. They get the extreme heat stress and extremely low oxygen levels at the same time. And that is going to cause serious trouble for any creatures or plants that are living there.”

The problem for researchers and marine conservationists is that the long-term consequences of such jumps in temperature are still unknown, added Jacobs. “There have been stories that there were widespread die-offs of shellfish such as whelks, and disruption to many fisheries during last year’s heatwave, but there is no hard evidence to back up these because we have not carried out any detailed research into the exact effects, and that is a problem.

“Global temperatures are rising and we are going to experience more and more marine heatwaves as a result. These are already having catastrophic impacts in other parts of the world, for instance in waters off Australia and other regions where fisheries have had to be closed and hectares of seagrass have been wiped out. We need to be able to pinpoint our most vulnerable regions and monitor them very closely.”

 

A key example is provided by seagrass, which form vast meadows around the shores of the UK where they absorb high levels of carbon and provide homes for hundreds of different species of marine creatures. These have been depleted in the past and a major restoration programme is now under way.

“However, we do not know what will happen to that programme if marine heatwaves start to kill off seagrass again,” added Jacobs. “We need to understand how this will happen and investigate now to find out if there are strains that are more resilient than others and concentrate on planting these.

“At the same time, we may need to be prepared to close down fisheries at certain times or impose quotas to protect them as heatwaves start to strike. These are the kinds of actions that have had to be imposed in other parts of the world and we may have to follow suit.”

Climate Talks Teeter, With Rich and Poor Countries in a Tug of War. Western countries are confronting demands for trillions of dollars to fight climate change and to cope with its worsening effects.

 

 

The Chinese delegation pavilion in Baku, Azerbaijan. Newly industrialized countries like China and India are part of an effort to secure trillions in climate financing.Credit...Aziz Karimov/Getty Images

 

 

By Max Bearak

Reporting from the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan

 

A two-week marathon of climate talks has entered its grueling final dash. Developed and developing nations were still deadlocked over how many hundreds of billions of dollars wealthy countries should invest to help speed the global transition to cleaner energy and protect the most vulnerable countries against the drumbeat of catastrophes that accompany global warming.

The seemingly sleepless deliberations at the summit, which is scheduled to end on Friday, resemble a tug of war: The world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries have banded together with newly industrialized economic giants like China and India to demand that history’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States and Europe, come up with a plan to provide $1.3 trillion in climate financing per year.

To put that number in context: Western countries have struggled to cobble together the $100 billion per year they promised at a climate summit 15 years ago. The financing question has become even trickier with a recent rightward political shift in some of those countries, notably the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president just a week before the start of this year’s climate summit, known as COP29.

Though U.N. climate summits normally run into overtime, they rarely collapse entirely. But money is such a contentious issue that the possibility of failure loomed over the negotiations on Thursday.

 

The overarching objective of the talks, being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is to set a new goal for annual financial flows. The $1.3 trillion number is based on cost estimates by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, a new body appointed by the United Nations, for developing and deploying technology that would hold the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with the preindustrial average.

“There is a clear obligation from developed countries,” said Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s lead negotiator, reacting to a draft resolution made public on Thursday morning that showed the two sides still far apart. “It is very frustrating. We need a justifiable number that will meet what we need.”

The United States, the world’s biggest economy and history’s biggest emitter, is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement when Mr. Trump takes office, which means the country would very likely renege on whatever financial commitments the final agreement sets out.

 Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s lead negotiator, in Baku this week. “There is a clear obligation from developed countries,” he said.Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images

 That has prompted Western negotiators in Baku to try to shift more reliance onto the private sector and lending institutions like the World Bank, rather than national budgets, as ultimate sources of climate finance.

 

Rivals of the West have capitalized on the disappointment felt by the rest of the world and sought to portray the deadlock as a betrayal.

“Western countries and Europe are trying to dilute what is already in the Paris Agreement,” said Ruslan Edelgeriev, the head of the Russian delegation in Baku and the chief climate adviser to President Vladimir V. Putin. He said he had seen “no great desire to increase” the amount of climate finance from developed nations in the negotiations he had attended.

India, like many developing countries, has used the negotiations to remind developed countries and the lending institutions they control that no emerging economy will limit its growth voluntarily. They say that not only is there not enough money for clean energy investments, but also that developing countries are locked out of much of it by onerous interest rates, which make renewable sources more expensive than fossil fuels like coal and oil.

“India’s investment needs for clean energy alone amount to half a trillion dollars per year,” said Arunabha Ghosh, who leads the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a prominent Indian research organization monitoring the talks. “But what I’m hearing is the same old, same old. On one level, recognition that the planet is off track, but there’s a lack of credible action and accountability. No one comes across as a clear leader.”

 Decisions at COP summits must be reached by unanimous consent. That means geopolitical blocs, or even individual countries, can drive hard bargains that threaten to derail the talks entirely.

 

U.S. officials at the American pavilion. The country is expected to renege on whatever financial commitments are agreed after Donald J. Trump takes office. Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images

 

 

Further complicating the talks, under U.N. rules set down decades ago, China is considered a developing country. Western nations have pushed for the list of developed countries to be expanded to include China and others, like Saudi Arabia, essentially drafting them into a list of donor countries that would be held accountable for financial contributions. China has recently overtaken Europe as the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history.

The Azerbaijani hosts, who have no leadership experience from past summits, have delegated responsibility to Ana Toni, Brazil’s top climate official at the conference, and her British counterpart, Alok Sharma, to be the final agreement’s main shepherds.

“It’s about achieving balance,” Ms. Toni said. “You are trying to make everyone equal, either in their happiness or unhappiness, with the final agreement’s language.”

Several Western officials, speaking anonymously to discuss the continuing negotiations, pointed to what they said was a “landing zone” that would involve a relatively modest increase in upfront finance pledges — to $200 billion or $300 billion a year from $100 billion a year — with heavy emphasis on efforts to reach into the trillions by leveraging private capital.

 

As with all COP resolutions, that will require deftly crafted language. Developing countries will need to feel assured that, while the resolution is ultimately nonbinding, its terms aren’t riddled with so many loopholes that they water down the core message that the financial obligation of wealthy countries is now of an order many times higher.

The talks coincide with another year of record-breaking heat.

Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year, and they are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, according to a U.N. report issued just before the summit. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks nearly impossible to limit the global temperature the strictest targets set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Scientists say every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London.

Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. More about Max Bearak

 

 

 

Cop29: ‘We’re here for life and death reasons,’ says ex-climate minister of Pakistan

Sherry Rehman said the negotiations so far had delivered ‘more talk than action’. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP

 Sherry Rehman says rich nations should pay ‘internationally determined contributions’ to help poorer and worst-affected countries

Amid the endless politicking and inscrutable arguments at the UN climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month, it can be hard to remember what is at stake. That’s why Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former climate change minister, is calling on global leaders to “keep an eye on the big picture”.

“We’re here for life and death reasons,” Rehman said.

In August 2022, devastating flash floods submerged one-third of Rehman’s country, affecting 33 million people. Roads, crops and infrastructure were washed away, and damage to water systems forced millions of people to rely on contaminated water from ponds and wells.

The key goal for Cop29 negotiators is to set an expanded goal for climate finance, something Rehman said Pakistan desperately required. The country needs to build resilient homes – a kind of investment, she noted, that had a net benefit of $4 for each $1 invested.

 

In addition, she said, Pakistan needs capacity and technical assistance to help manage its decarbonisation and adaptation plans. And though a solar boom is already under way in the country, it is overburdening consumers, so officials need funding to help speed up the energy transition, she said.

As Pakistan faces a future of increasing climate vulnerability, countries have failed to transition away from the burning of fossil fuels despite having made a pledge a year ago, and global carbon emissions are continuing to rise.

So Rehman is calling for a new UN climate framework. In addition to “nationally determined contributions” wherein individual countries track their climate action targets, she says the UN should require “internationally determined contributions” from wealthy nations to align with the climate plans of the developing and most-affected countries.

She said UN climate negotiations were the main way countries such as Pakistan could advocate for their needs to be met. That meant they had no choice but to come to the table.

“We’re one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world,” she said. “So we can’t walk away.”

Still, she harbours frustration about the negotiations, which in her estimation have delivered “more talk than action”. On finance, there is a yawning gap between what countries need and what the global north is willing to put up.

Poor countries will need $1tn a year in climate finance by 2030, experts said last week. That is five years earlier than rich countries are likely to agree to at UN climate negotiations. Meeting the target is likely to be even more difficult owing to the re-election of Donald Trump in the US, who has vowed to pull the US from the Paris climate agreement and drop commitments to cut carbon emissions.

“There will be a huge impact, a blow to the negotiations, if [the world’s] biggest economy goes out and says it’s taking its money and going elsewhere and it’s taking its expertise and its commitment and its values elsewhere,” Rehman said.

At Cop29, rich nations have argued that the private sector should have an increased role in fulfilling climate finance targets. But that could be dangerous for countries such as Pakistan, especially when it comes to funding for climate adaptation, which does not tend to produce desirable profits, Rehman said.

 

“Why would the private sector that revolves around markets and profits rush to the frontlines of climate catastrophe where only humanitarian agencies go?” she asked. “The private sector can be incentivised and certainly used to mobilise capital, yes, but capital and finance mobilisation has to happen at the international public sector as well.”

Finance should also be provided in grants, not loans, said Rehman, to avoid increasing countries’ debt burdens. “Countries are drowning, both in floods and debt,” she said.

Negotiators should ensure that finance is easily accessible. At present, because Pakistan doesn’t meet the definition of a “least developed country”, it is unable to access some crucial funds. And when funding is available, it can take two years to access.

“The barriers are too many,” Rehman said. “By the time it often comes to you, it’s too late: the needs on the ground have changed.”

A long history of climate inaction means that developing countries are increasingly facing irreversible impacts, known as loss and damage. Two years ago at Cop27 in Egypt, Rehman was a lead negotiator on this controversial issue, helping secure a groundbreaking commitment to set up a dedicated fund for loss and damage. But two years on, pledges from developed countries amount to a tiny fraction of what is needed. Rehman said the pressure must stay on donor countries to deliver the finance needed.

“We used to say what went on in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” she said. “What’s happening to us will happen to you tomorrow, so, think collectively.”

Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star. Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead.

 

 

Cooling towers at the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa., last month. One reactor will be brought back online in 2028.Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

 

 

By Brad Plumer

Reporting from the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan

 

 For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Sama Bilbao y Leon has been attending the annual United Nations climate change talks since 1999, when she was a student of nuclear engineering. And for most of that time, she said, people didn’t want to discuss nuclear power at all.

“We had antinuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Leave!’” she said.

These days, it’s a very different story.

At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge.

 

“It’s a whole different dynamic today,” said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.”

The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting any planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes longtime users of the technology like Canada, France, South Korea and the United States. But it also includes countries that don’t currently have any nuclear capacity, like Kenya, Mongolia and Nigeria.

Over the past few years, interest in nuclear power has steadily grown in tandem with concern about global warming. That shift is apparent at these U.N. climate talks, known as COP29. Along with the chants by vegan activists and the solar power booths that have enlivened past summits, countries like Turkey and Britain are now hosting panels on how to finance new nuclear plants or how small reactors could generate the heat needed for all kinds of industrial purposes.

Nuclear energy still has plenty of detractors, including environmentalists who point to the technology’s high costs and radioactive waste. Yet many politicians at this year’s climate talks seem eager to give it a second look.

“It gives me hope that nuclear energy is more and more popular around the world,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic said in an address to other leaders this week. “I strongly believe that nuclear power is essential to meet climate goals.”

 

The interest has been driven by several factors. In Britain and the United States, politicians and businesses who want to phase out fossil fuels say they need a steady source of carbon-free electricity to complement solar and wind power, which aren’t available at all hours. In Eastern Europe, many countries have been seeking alternatives to Russian gas.

Elsewhere, some developing countries see nuclear power as crucial for cleaning up air pollution while meeting rising energy demand.

Turkey is ramping up its use of renewable power and improving energy efficiency, but “it’s not enough,” said Abdullah Bugrahan Karaveli, president of the country’s energy and nuclear agency. The country’s electricity use is growing at around 4 percent per year, he said, and “we cannot do it without nuclear in our long-term plan.”

While Turkey doesn’t have any working nuclear power plants today, construction is underway on the country’s first plant along the southern coast and officials are in talks with Russia, China and South Korea to build a second and third plant.

 Yet the obstacles are enormous. Over the past two decades, the amount of electricity generated by nuclear plants worldwide has largely flatlined. Many countries have been deterred by the delays and soaring costs that often plague efforts to build new reactors. Others, like Germany and Japan, have shut down reactors because of public opposition and a fear of accidents.

 

The Neckarwestheim 2 nuclear power plant in southwestern Germany, which was shut down in April 2023.Credit...Michael Probst/Associated Press

 

 

Critics have called the pledge to triple nuclear capacity “meaningless,” doubting that it could ever be done affordably or safely.

“We need to be practical and work on real issues,” said Shinichi Kihara, a senior official at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. “In particular, nuclear projects often face uncertainty about future cost overruns.”

The Biden administration has been particularly active in promoting nuclear power at the talks. On Tuesday, the White House put out a detailed road map for how the country could triple its nuclear capacity by 2050.

Later in the week, the administration signed a letter of intent to provide a loan of roughly $979 million to a project in Poland that would build three large new nuclear reactors designed by Westinghouse, an American company.

 

Jake Levine, the senior director for climate and energy at the White House, said that the United States was interested in expanding the use of nuclear power in Eastern Europe to help countries avoid dependency on Russian gas.

Nuclear power, he said, provides “a clear energy security value for many of our partners and allies.” And while President Biden will leave office in January, Mr. Levine said that efforts to promote U.S. nuclear technology overseas had “strong bipartisan support” in Congress.

One U.S. ally in Eastern Europe, Romania, already gets one-fifth of its electricity from two large reactors. The country is now in talks with Western nations about reviving two other reactors that were partly built at the same site but never completed.

At the same time, an Oregon-based start-up called NuScale plans to build six smaller reactors in Romania, backed by a U.S. government loan. Some experts think a new generation of smaller reactors might be easier to finance than traditional large reactors, though the technology is still unproven.

 

One hurdle for Romania: Many of the country’s nuclear workers have left for the United Arab Emirates, which recently built an enormous nuclear power plant and can pay higher salaries.

“Still, there is clear momentum for nuclear power,” said Andrei Covatariu, a senior research associate at the Energy Policy Group, a Romanian think tank. “It’s not a topic that will just go away.”

Dr. Bilbao y Leon said that financing was still a major challenge for nuclear projects. The World Bank, for instance, has not bankrolled a nuclear project since 1959. But pressure is growing.

“It’s one thing if I tell the World Bank they should support nuclear,” she said. “But if there are dozens of countries, including emerging nations, saying we’re interested in this, that’s a little different.”

Outside the closed negotiating rooms in Baku, where diplomats and experts were trying to hash out a deal on providing climate aid to developing countries, there were demonstrations for and against nuclear power this week.

 

On Thursday, a group of several dozen protesters held signs with slogans like “Don’t Nuke the Climate” and “Stop Nuclear.”

“Nuclear is not clean energy if you take into account all the mineral production and the pollution that it sometimes causes,” said Ivonne Yanez, the president of Acción Ecológica, an environmental nonprofit group based in Ecuador. “We have to stop nuclear.”

Elsewhere in the venue, a group of young nuclear professionals called Nuclear for Climate held a rally of their own. Two of them dressed up as polar bears and danced while holding up an atom symbol as others handed out bananas to a curious crowd.

 

A demonstration in support of nuclear energy at the conference venue in Baku on Friday.Credit...Douglas Alteen/The New York Times

 

 

A banana contains the same amount of radiation as a person would get from living next to a properly maintained nuclear power plant for one year, one said.

The group has been around since the 2015 climate summit, where the Paris Agreement was signed. “Initially we were very tiny,” said Hugo Bernat, 27, a nuclear engineer based in Brussels. “But the movement is growing.”

 David Gelles contributed reporting.

 

Exxon Chief to Trump: Don’t Withdraw From Paris Climate Deal. Darren Woods was one of only a few Western oil executives attending a global climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

 

 

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said if President-elect Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, that would “leave a void with respect to what the Trump administration could bring to this process.”Credit...Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

 

 

By Rebecca F. Elliott

 

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, cautioned President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday against withdrawing from the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, saying Mr. Trump risked leaving a void at the negotiating table.

Mr. Woods, speaking at an annual U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, described climate negotiations as opportunities for Mr. Trump to pursue common-sense policymaking.

“We need a global system for managing global emissions,” Mr. Woods said in an interview with The New York Times in Baku. “Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.”

Mr. Woods, who also attended last year’s climate talks in Dubai, urged government officials to create incentives for companies to transition to cleaner forms of energy in a profitable way.

“The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly,” he said, noting that his company was obligated to generate profits for its shareholders.

Mr. Woods’s presence in a stadium teeming with diplomats is all the more noteworthy because of who is not here in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Many heads of state, including President Biden, have taken a pass, as have the leaders of several big oil companies like Shell and Chevron.

Hanging over this year’s negotiations is the election of Mr. Trump, who has falsely called global warming a hoax, encouraged oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” and vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty — again.

Mr. Woods’s views on Paris are not new. Exxon also asked Mr. Trump not to withdraw from the treaty in 2017.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, Karoline Leavitt, said that he would pursue policies he campaigned on. “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” she said in a statement. “He will deliver.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. Woods was again seeking to dissuade Mr. Trump from withdrawing from the Paris agreement.

Earlier Tuesday, during a taping of a Bloomberg podcast, Mr. Woods sought to ease concerns about the effect Mr. Trump might have on efforts to address climate change.

“I’m not sure that any one administration is going to significantly advance the pace of the transition or conversely significantly slow the pace,” Mr. Woods said, calling the energy transition “a long-term investment.”

The Exxon chief also called for global standards to account for carbon dioxide emissions, a system that would serve as the basis for governments to set regulatory standards.

In that interview, hosted by the Atlantic Council, a research organization, Mr. Woods praised the Inflation Reduction Act — a law Mr. Trump has criticized — for encouraging companies to invest in cleaner forms of energy without directing them to pursue specific technologies.

Exxon is pursuing technologies that are similar to drilling and processing oil and gas. Those include harvesting lithium from briny water and using natural gas to make hydrogen.

Exxon is poised to spend around $3 billion this year on projects that provide alternatives to fossil fuels or reduce emissions, the Swiss bank UBS estimates. That amounts to about 11 percent of the company’s planned capital outlay for the year, a smaller share than many large oil companies expect to spend, according to the bank.

Exxon’s spending on projects related to the energy transition is poised to rise in the coming years, totaling more than $20 billion from 2022 through 2027.

Oil and gas companies’ participation in annual U.N. climate talks rankles some environmentalists who worry that they will press negotiators to preserve too big a role for fossil fuels in the energy industry.

For years, Exxon’s executives expressed doubt about whether greenhouse gas emissions were causing temperatures to rise, even though the company’s scientists accurately predicted how much burning fossil fuels would warm the climate.

Mr. Woods has defended the company, saying Exxon’s position has evolved with the scientific consensus. He has acknowledged the relationship between emissions from humanity’s use of fossil fuels and climate change. On Tuesday, he said that Exxon brought an important view to climate discussions.

“Some people can sit around and talk about it,” Mr. Woods said. “There are other people who are actually involved in doing it, and I think the perspective changes.”

The company has backed the Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and committed to reducing its own emissions to net zero by 2050.

That goal does not include the greenhouse gases that are released when people burn Exxon’s fuels. The company also expects demand for oil and gas to remain stronger than most scientists believe is consistent with meeting the Paris target.

U.S. demand for oil and gas is likely to rise if Mr. Trump succeeds in spurring economic growth, Mr. Woods said. If consumption patterns shift, Exxon is prepared to pivot.

“Our strategy is robust to any number of future scenarios,” he said.

Rebecca F. Elliott covers energy with a focus on how the industry is changing in the push to curb climate-warming emissions. More about Rebecca F. Elliott

Extreme weather cost $2tn globally over past decade, report finds. US suffered greatest economic losses, report commissioned by International Chamber of Commerce finds, followed by China and India.

 

A man cleans debris inside a gas station in Lakewood Park, Florida, in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. Photograph: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images

 

Violent weather cost the world $2tn over the past decade, a report has found, as diplomats descend on the Cop29 climate summit for a tense fight over finance.

The analysis of 4,000 climate-related extreme weather events, from flash floods that wash away homes in an instant to slow-burning droughts that ruin farms over years, found economic damages hit $451bn across the past two years alone.

The figures reflect the full cost of extreme weather rather than the share scientists can attribute to climate breakdown. They come as world leaders argue over how much rich countries should pay to help poor countries clean up their economies, adapt to a hotter world and deal with the damage done by increasingly violent weather.

“The data from the past decade shows definitively that climate change is not a future problem,” said John Denton, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which commissioned the report. “Major productivity losses from extreme weather events are being felt in the here and now by the real economy.”

The report found a gradual upward trend in the cost of extreme weather events between 2014 and 2023, with a spike in 2017 when an active hurricane season battered North America. The US suffered the greatest economic losses over the 10-year period, at $935bn, followed by China at $268bn and India at $112bn. Germany, Australia, France and Brazil all made the top 10.

When measured a person, small islands such as Saint Martin and the Bahamas saw the greatest losses.

Fire, water, wind and heat have wiped more and more dollars off government balance sheets as the world has grown richer, people have settled in disaster-prone regions, and fossil fuel pollution has baked the planet.

But until recent years, scientists struggled to estimate the extent of the role that humans played by warping extreme weather events with planet-heating gas.

Climate breakdown was responsible for more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study found last month, and doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rainfall that hammered central Europe this September, an early attribution study found. In some other cases, researchers found only mild effects or did not observe a climate link at all.

Ilan Noy, a disaster economist at Victoria University of Wellington, who was not involved in the ICC study, said its numbers align with previous research he had done but cautioned that the underlying data did not capture the full picture. “The main caveat is that these numbers actually miss the impact where it truly matters, in poor communities and in vulnerable countries.”

A study Noy co-wrote last year estimated the costs of extreme weather attributable to climate breakdown at $143bn a year, mostly due to loss of human life, but was limited by data gaps, particularly in Africa.