Cop30 live: US looms over talks despite absence as protests at venue continue | Cop30
important events
Damian Carrington
Here’s a little timetable cleansing in the middle of the serious business of COP30. Or actually a big one; very big.
The new double-headed floating wind turbine will break the record for largest turbine. Measuring no more than a kilometer wide and rivaling the Empire State Building in height, it will produce 50 MW of energy; This is twice the size of today’s largest turbine.
Being built by Ming Yang Smart Energy In China, the company has already deployed a 16MW version of the device called OceanX (pictured below). The company says the prototype has survived multiple typhoons.
“If successful, this model could be a game changer in the floating wind industry,” said Umang Mehrotra of research firm Rystad Energy. Scientific American.
Electric Age “There it is,” he said in the International Energy Agency’s flagship annual report released today. Even if all climate action were halted today, renewables would grow faster than other major energy sources; The fact that they are cheap means that their growth has remained constant.
China knows this; Today it also reported its first month. Half of new cars sold were electric.
The USA under Trump does not do this. The IEA’s main scenario predicts that Trump’s anti-climate policies will mean the US will have about 30% less solar energy by 2035 than predicted last year.
Hi Matthew Taylor, I’m here. I will be moderating the live blog for the next few hours and covering the latest developments from day 3 of COP30.
We have been protesting throughout the night and have other plans for this morning. But while we wait for things to improve in Belem, it’s worth bookmarking this piece by my colleague Nina Lahkani, which highlights the health impacts of fossil fuel projects around the world.
The third day of Cop30 begins
Dharna Noor
The second day of Cop29 ended with a bang as dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the conference centre. Demonstrators, some wearing headgear and carrying tools, ripped doors off their hinges, passed through security scanners and wrestled with guards before successfully entering the venue. “Our forests are not for sale,” one protester’s sign read.
It marks the return of major protests at the UN climate talks this year after several years of repression. More demonstrations, both on and off site, are planned for the rest of the week.
Some 50,000 people attend Cop30, from civil society groups holding rallies to researchers poring over esoteric documents and politicians huddled together in brightly lit rooms. But one group has been conspicuously absent from the climate talks: a delegation from the United States, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter.
Research firm Carbon Brief confirmed on Tuesday that the United States has ended negotiations completely for the first time. US President Donald Trump, who has called the climate crisis a “hoax”, withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement in January as part of an all-out attack on climate policy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who attended climate talks on Tuesday, strongly condemned Trump’s anti-environment agenda: “He’s an invasive species, a destructive president,” he said at a press conference. “He’s trying to roll back the progress of the last century, he’s trying to recreate the 19th century, he’s doubling down on the stupidity.”
Newsom, whose state has the world’s fourth-largest economy, is Cop29’s top US official. Everywhere he went on Tuesday, scores of spectators followed him. At rallies and press conferences, he assured crowds that California was committed to climate action.
“The United States is as stupid as we want it to be on this issue, but the state of California is not,” he said at a meeting earlier Tuesday. “And so we will defend ourselves, we will lean in, and we will compete in this space.”
Reactions to the US absence have been mixed. On Monday, Tuvalu’s Minister of Internal Affairs and Environment, Maina Casefua Talia, said Trump’s withdrawal was a “disgraceful disrespect for the rest of the world.”
But on Tuesday, Christiana Figueres, former secretary-general of the United Nations framework convention on climate change, said Tuesday that the US’s absence from the talks was “actually a good thing.”
“Ciao, bambino” was the US response to leaving the Paris agreement.
“This is a terrific statement from the mother of the Paris Agreement,” Newsom said at a news conference. Newsom said Trump’s absence “creates an opportunity” for local leaders to get involved in climate policy.
“What stands in the way becomes the road. This is an opportunity for us to assert ourselves from the bottom up at the local level,” he said. “He stood back. That’s why I stood up.”
Cop30 CEO Ana Toni told an evening press conference that Tuesday was a big day to showcase local climate leadership. More than 185 city representatives met to talk about adaptation to extreme heat, he said, and more than $20 talked about concrete action to beat the heat and its funding.
Research shows that subnational actors, including the United States, can make a big difference in climate policy. But some have warned that Trump could still try to derail that progress. Cop30 is particularly concerned in light of the Trump administration’s behavior at the international shipping meeting last month, where officials threatened some foreign leaders and threatened tariffs on those who support a carbon fee on shipping.
Tomorrow morning, activists will hold another protest, focusing attention specifically on Trump. They will carry a banner with a sketch of the US president that says “Resist the climate saboteurs.”
Activist Denise Robbins, one of the organizers of the protest, told the Guardian: “Trump’s absence so far has been a blessing in disguise, but you never know when he might try to ruin the talks.”
He called on global leaders to resist any pressure from the United States. “No matter what happens in the United States, the rest of the world needs to come together and take action on climate,” he said. “This is the only way we can achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement.”
