The election of Donald Trump as president has already substantially changed the tenor of the United Nations' 29th annual Climate Change Conference (COP29) that opened today in Baku, Azerbaijan. COP29 is being billed as the "climate finance COP." Actually, all COPs are always regarded as "finance COPs" by poor countries whose chief goal is to extract money from rich countries allegedly to address the problems caused by man-made climate change.
At Baku, the representatives from nearly 200 countries are supposed to agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal for climate finance. In this case, poor countries are demanding that rich countries pay $1 trillion annually in climate finance, up from $100 billion. That sum is supposed to help them adopt non-fossil fuel energy supplies and address the harms caused by climate change.
