Key events
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Damian Carrington
Here’s a little timeline cleanse amidst the serious business of Cop30. Or in fact a big one – very big.
A new, double-headed floating wind turbine is set to obliterate the record for the largest turbine. It will be not far off a kilometre wide and rival the Empire State Building in height, generating 50MW of power – double today’s largest turbine.
It is being built by Ming Yang Smart Energy in China and the company has already deployed a 16MW version of the device (pictured below), which is called OceanX. The prototype has survived multiple typhoons, the company says.
“If successful, this model can be a game changer in the floating wind industry,” Umang Mehrotra, at research firm Rystad Energy, told Scientific American.
The Age of Electricity is here, the International Energy Agency said today in its flagship annual report. Even if all climate action halted today, renewables would still grow faster than any other major energy source – their cheapness means their growth is locked in.
China knows this – it also reported today its first month where more than half of new cars sold were electric.
The US, under Trump, does not. The IEA’s central scenario projects that Trump’s anti-climate policies means the US will have about 30% less solar power by 2035 than forecast last year.
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Hello, Matthew Taylor here. I will be running the liveblog for the next few hours, keeping across on the latest developments from Day 3 at Cop30.
We had protests overnight and there are more planned for this morning. But as we wait for things to get going in Belem it is worth flagging this piece by my colleague Nina Lahkani highlighting the health impact of fossil fuel projects around the world.
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Day three begins at Cop30
Dharna Noor
The second day of Cop29 ended with a bang, as dozens of Indigenous protestors forced their way into the conference center. The demonstrators, some of whom wore headdresses and carried instruments, pulled doors from their hinges, shoved through security scanners, and tussled with guards before successfully entering the venue. “Our forests are not for sale,” one protestor’s sign read.
It’s a sign that this year marks the return of major protests at UN climate talks, after several years of repression. More demonstrations are planned at the venue for the rest of the week, both on and off site.
Some 50,000 people are attending Cop30, from the civil society groups holding rallies, to the researchers poring over esoteric documents, to the politicians huddling together in brightly lit rooms. One group, however, is conspicuously absent from the climate talks: a delegation from the US, the world’s largest historical greenhouse gas polluter.
It’s the first time the US has sat out the negotiations completely, research organization Carbon Brief confirmed on Tuesday. US president Donald Trump, who calls the climate crisis a “hoax,” pulled the country from the Paris Agreement in January as part of an all-out assault on climate policy.
California governor Gavin Newsom, who arrived at the climate talks on Tuesday, strongly condemned Trump’s anti-environmental agenda: “He’s an invasive species, he’s a wrecking ball president,” he said at a press conference. “He’s trying to roll back progress of the last century, he’s trying to recreate the 19th century, he’s doubling down on stupid.”
Newsom, whose state has the world’s fourth-largest economy, is the topmost US official at Cop29. Everywhere he went on Tuesday, he was followed by hoards of spectators. In meetings and press conferences, he assured crowds that California is committed to climate action.
“The United States of America is as dumb as we want to be on this topic, but the state of California is not,” he said at a meeting earlier Tuesday. “And so we are going to assert ourselves, we’re going to lean in, and we are going to compete in this space.”
Response to the US’s absence has been mixed. On Monday, Tuvalu’s Home Affairs and Environment Minister Maina Vakafua Talia said Trump’s withdrawal showed “a shameful disregard for the rest of the world.”
But on Tuesday, Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations framework convention on climate change, said on Tuesday that the US’s absence from the talks “actually is a good thing.”
“Ciao, bambino,” was her response to the US’s departure from the Paris agreement.
At a press gaggle, Newsom said: “That’s a hell of a statement coming from the mother of the Paris Agreement.” Trump’s absence “creates opportunity” for local leaders to step into the fold on climate policy, Newsom said.
“What stands in the way becomes the way. This is an opportunity for us bottom up at the local level to assert ourselves,” he said. “He pulled away. That’s why I pulled up.”
Tuesday was a big day for the showcasing of local climate leadership, said Ana Toni, Cop30’s CEO, at an evening press conference. More than 185 city representatives met to speak about adaptation to extreme heat, and more than $20 speak about about concrete action to beat the heat and financing for it, she said.
Subnational actors can make a major difference in climate policy, including in the US, studies show. But Trump could still attempt to derail that progress, some have warned. Cop30 are especially concerned in light of the Trump administration’s behavior at an international maritime meeting last month, where officials menaced some foreign leaders and threatened tariffs on those who supported a carbon fee on shipping.
Tomorrow morning, activists will hold another protest, placing the spotlight on Trump specifically. They will hold a banner that says “resist climate saboteurs,” adorned with an outline of the US president.
“Trump’s lack of presence so far is a blessing in disguise, but you never know when he’s going to try and botch the talks,” activist Denise Robbins, an organizer of the action, told the Guardian.
She urged global leaders to resist any pressure they may face from the US. “No matter what happens in the US, the rest of the world needs to come together and act on climate,” she said. “It’s the only way we’ll keep to the goals of the Paris climate agreement.”
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