Global climate focus shifts to Brazil even before COP29 is over

Biden wanders in a rainforest, Guterres urges climate deal from G20 as Baku meetings sputter.

In today’s edition:

— Hopes for a climate finance breakthrough shift to Brazil as Biden makes history in the Amazon

— Carbon capture and storage projects backlog expected to improve under Trump team

— Can bees that don’t sting save the Amazon Basin? This climate project thinks so.

— The third emission? Forget carbon and methane, nitrous oxide from fertilizers is even worse

— Number of people living without access to electricity declined by 10 million last year

President Joe Biden on Sunday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Photo: The White House.

With climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan sputtering, the focus of the global climate community shifted to Brazil this week as a video of President Joe Biden wandering in a rainforest swept the Internet, and United Nations leader António Guterres flew in to beg G20 leaders in Rio to solve the global climate finance stalemate.

Brazil, which hosts COP30 next year in Belem, is already shaping up to be the climate story of 2025, and Biden becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon Basin was an appropriate kickoff ahead of the G20 meeting.

Yes, the video of Biden wandering in the rainforest in Manaus was a viral hit, but beforehand he used the pulpit to remind the world of his climate legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January.

Whether leaders can achieve a breakthrough depends on China’s willingness to participate, as Trump almost certainly won’t agree to any deal done now. Also, the U.S. decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles sucked most of the non-Trump oxygen out of the proceedings, at least on the first day.

But the G20 will call attention to Brazil’s economic and environmental plight and allow President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva the platform he needs to turn the climate discussion into a bigger issue among world leaders, tying hunger and poverty into the mix with Brazil itself as an example of competing priorities.

Even before COP29 has ended in Baku, Brazil and Belem have stolen the limelight. Climate investors should be prepared to learn a lot more about the Amazon in coming months, and the energy interests that make it such a challenge, and opportunity.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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