US, China Must Pay Their Share For Climate Change Remedies

French President Emmanuel Macron said the US, China, and other non-European rich nations must pay “their share” to help poorer countries deal with climate change.

“We need the United States and China to step up,” Macron said on the sidelines of the COP27 summit in Egypt, AFP reported.

More than 100 world leaders started arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh for the UN’s annual climate change summit, attempting to maintain momentum in the battle to curb planet-warming emissions.

Despite an early breakthrough to put the issue of compensating poorer countries for the impact of climate change on the summit’s agenda, delegates are downbeat on prospects for big new commitments to rein in planet-warming emissions.

Rising energy prices, accelerated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, have led many governments to prioritize security of supply over the transition to cleaner energy.

Global emissions need to start falling rapidly before 2030 if the world has any chance of keeping global warming below 2 degrees. But they will likely hit a record this year. Countries from Pakistan to the US have been hit by unprecedented climate disasters.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, the new president of COP27, said the breakthrough on loss and damage was reached after 48 hours of intense talks.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Macron and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are among the biggest names expected at the start of the two-week event. US President Joe Biden and Brazil’s President-elect Luis Inacio Lula da Silva are due to appear later on. The most notable no shows are China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, leaders of the world’s largest and third-largest emitters.

EIB’s Hoyer Warns Against Energy Transition Backtracking

European Investment Bank President Werner Hoyer warned against ‘’backtracking” on energy transition, saying dependence on fossil fuels must stop despite the challenges posed by the invasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices.

“Backtracking would be absolutely the wrong step, but of course the temptation is there,” Hoyer said an interview with Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of COp27. He also said developing countries must get the necessary support from the industrialized world to enable them to benefit from renewable energy

Macron Says US, China Must Pay ‘Their Share’

French President Emmanuel Macron said the US, China and others must pay “their share” to help poorer countries deal with climate change.

“We need the United States and China to step up,” Macron said on the sidelines of the COP27 summit in Egypt, AFP reported. “Europeans are paying. We are the only ones paying. Pressure must be put on rich non-European countries, telling them, ‘you have to pay your fair share’.”

IKEA Seeing Full Shelves Again After Covid Hit, CEO Says

Jesper Brodin, CEO of IKEA, said inflation is easing in some of the countries in which the furniture retailer operates.

“Our bigger change was during the initial phase of Covid,” he said to Bloomberg TV. “But today we see great progress and our shelves are full again. Since July and August, we’ve been able to bring down prices” in some places.

The company thought sales “would be much lower at this point due to the energy crisis,”  he said. But “people are still really focused on life at home. They are prioritizing home more than ever.”

Brodin said the popularity of plant-based food, which IKEA started selling about two years ago, was growing rapidly.

“Already in Germany, our biggest market, more than 30% of our food offering is plant-based,” he said. “That surprised me a bit.”

Africa Seeing Little Green-Energy Investment, Says BloombergNEF

Africa is getting a “tiny share” of global investments in green energy, said Luiza Demor, head of energy transitions at BloombergNEF. The situation for emerging markets is a little better.

“These countries are not seeing investment flows,” she said. Still, this is the “first time Africa is in the spotlight, together with emerging markets,” Demor said.

Lula’s Return Could See Brazil Regain Climate Leadership, Says CFR’s O’Neil

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro made Brazil “a pariah” on climate change, according to Shannon O’Neil, senior fellow for Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations. With the return of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva from January, it can “regain that leadership.”

“It’s a really interesting moment for Brazil,” O’Neil said to Bloomberg TV. “You have an outgoing president who was very anti-climate change, who didn’t attend some of these summits and who definitely had a policy of deforestation and an anti-environmental approach.”

That contrasts with Lula, who talked about saving Brazil’s rainforests in his presidential campaign.

“Lula will have a lot of problems at home he needs to deal with — the end of Covid, a recovering economy,” O’Neil said. “But I think the environment is an issue that is dear to his heart and one he will be focused on.”

–With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Charles Daly, Lyubov Pronina, and Tom Metcalf.