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    Saudi Arabia Is Working to Undercut a Pledge to Quit Fossil Fuels

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    Despite endorsing the declaration at last year’s U.N. climate summit, officials have tried to eliminate the same language in at least five U.N. forums, diplomats said.As United Nations climate talks enter their final week in Azerbaijan and G20 leaders gather in Brazil, diplomats from Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, are working to foil any agreement that renews a pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, negotiators said.“Maybe they’ve been emboldened by Trump’s victory, but they are acting with abandon here,” said Alden Meyer, senior associate with E3G, a London-based climate research organization, who is at the talks in Azerbaijan. “They’re just being a wrecking ball.”Negotiators say it’s part of a year-long campaign by Saudi Arabia to foil an agreement made last year by 200 nations to move away from oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.Saudi Arabia was one of the signatories to that deal, but has been working ever since to bury that pledge and make sure it’s not repeated in any new global agreements, according to five diplomats who requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.With varying degrees of success, the Saudis have opposed transition language in at least five U.N. resolutions this year, the diplomats said. The Saudis fought it at a United Nations nuclear conference, at a summit of small island nations, during discussions of a U.N. blueprint for tackling global challenges, at a biodiversity summit and at a meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers in Washington in October, according to the diplomats.Saudi government officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The election of Donald J. Trump has cast a pall over the climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, known as COP29. Mr. Trump has promised to withdraw the United States from the global fight against climate change and increase the American production of fossil fuels, which is already at record levels. That may be emboldening Saudi officials at the current climate talks, analysts say. On Saturday, Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the board at Saudi Aramco, the state petroleum company, sat ringside with Mr. Trump at a U.F.C. fight in Madison Square Garden in New York City.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      COP29 Climate Talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, Head Into Final Stretch

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      Senior ministers are arriving in an effort to break a deadlock over the summit’s main goal: funding to help lower-income countries hit hard by global warming.More than halfway through the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, negotiators from nearly 200 countries remain far apart on a number of the key issues up for debate.As nations try to agree on a plan to provide potentially trillions of dollars to developing countries suffering from the effects of climate change, divisions remain over how much money should be made available, what kind of financing efforts should count toward the overall goal and how recipient countries should gain access to the funds.Negotiations often go into overtime. But with just four days to go, many attendees fear that this could be the first summit since the Copenhagen talks in 2009 to conclude without a deal.“There is a high risk this could collapse,” said a senior negotiator for a major European country, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief, pleaded on Monday with countries to stop fighting and to reach a deal.He warned against a dynamic “where groups of parties dig in and refuse to move on one issue, until others move elsewhere.” He added, “This is a recipe for going literally nowhere.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star.

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      Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead.For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem, not part of the solution.Sama Bilbao y Leon has been attending the annual United Nations climate change talks since 1999, when she was a student of nuclear engineering. And for most of that time, she said, people didn’t want to discuss nuclear power at all.“We had antinuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Leave!’” she said.These days, it’s a very different story.At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge.“It’s a whole different dynamic today,” said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.”The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting any planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes longtime users of the technology like Canada, France, South Korea and the United States. But it also includes countries that don’t currently have any nuclear capacity, like Kenya, Mongolia and Nigeria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Argentina Mulls Exiting Paris Climate Deal

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      The South American nation says it is considering withdrawing from the landmark agreement, which aims to limit carbon emissions and slow global warming.Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is considering withdrawing the South American nation from the Paris climate agreement that aims to curb planet-warming emissions, a drastic move that only one other world leader has made in the past: former President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew the United States during his first term.The South American country is considering leaving the 2015 agreement as part of a broad reassessment of its climate policies, Argentina’s foreign minister said on Thursday.Argentina’s review of the landmark climate deal comes as the world braces for an intended second withdrawal from the accords by President-elect Trump. If Mr. Milei also abandons the agreement, some worry it could set off a domino effect, prompting other countries to reconsider their own participation.The country has not yet made a decision on whether it will leave the accords, according to the foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein. But it is reconsidering its participation in a deal that “has a lot of elements” that Mr. Milei’s government does not agree with.“We’re re-evaluating our strategy on all matters related to climate change,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “And so far, we haven’t made any other decision beyond standing down until things are clearer.”A day earlier, Mr. Milei unexpectedly pulled out Argentina’s delegation from the annual United Nations climate conference, which is being hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is known as COP29 this year. In the past, Mr. Milei, a right-wing libertarian, has called the climate crisis a “socialist lie.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Burgum for Interior Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota to lead the Interior Department, leading the new administration’s plans to open federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling.Governor Burgum, 68, has longstanding ties to fossil fuel companies and acted as a liaison between the Trump campaign and the oil executives who have donated heavily to it. The governor is particularly close to Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chairman of Continental Resources, one of the country’s largest independent oil companies, who has hosted fund-raisers and donated nearly $5 million to Mr. Trump since 2023.Mr. Trump made the announcement during a gala for the America First Policy Institute being held at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Mr. Burgum was in attendance.“I won’t tell you his name, it might be something like Burgum,” Mr. Trump said, before telling the crowd, “Actually he’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”North Dakota sits over part of the Bakken Formation, which has emerged as a major source of oil in the United States thanks to hydraulic fracturing, a horizontal drilling technique that took off in 2008 and made it possible to extract substantial amounts of oil that had been inaccessible through traditional drilling.Mr. Burgum has been a cheerleader for drilling, a posture that fits in well with the mantra of “Drill, baby, drill,” which Mr. Trump repeatedly uses to describe his energy policy.Scientists have said that the United States and other major economies must stop developing new oil and gas projects to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming. The burning of oil, gas and coal is the main driver of climate change. The Biden administration has tried to limit some drilling on public lands and in federal waters, particularly in fragile wilderness like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Trump has said he would end those protections. More

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      Exxon Chief to Trump: Don’t Withdraw From Paris Climate Deal

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      Darren Woods was one of only a few Western oil executives attending a global climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, cautioned President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday against withdrawing from the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, saying Mr. Trump risked leaving a void at the negotiating table.Mr. Woods, speaking at an annual U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, described climate negotiations as opportunities for Mr. Trump to pursue common-sense policymaking.“We need a global system for managing global emissions,” Mr. Woods said in an interview with The New York Times in Baku. “Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.”Mr. Woods also urged government officials to create incentives for companies to transition to cleaner forms of energy in a profitable way.“The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly,” he said.Mr. Woods’s presence in a stadium teeming with diplomats is all the more noteworthy because of who is not here in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Many heads of state, including President Biden, have taken a pass, as have the leaders of several big oil companies like Shell and Chevron.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About COP29 and How the U.S. Election Affects Climate Talks

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      Diplomats and leaders from around the world are gathering for annual climate negotiations. Here’s what they’re all about and what Donald Trump’s victory means for the meeting.United Nations climate talks are starting in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday.The meeting will come just days after the election victory of Donald J. Trump, who has dismissed global warming as a hoax, and at the end of what will probably be the hottest year in recorded history. Extreme weather, much of it made more intense by climate change, is wreaking havoc around the globe.Against that backdrop, diplomats and heads of state from nearly 200 countries are gathering to try to chart a path forward. Here’s a concise guide to the meeting.What to know:What is COP29?When is COP29?Where is COP29?What is the main goal?Who will attend?How will the U.S. election result affect COP29?How will wars affect COP29?What is COP29?It’s an annual gathering of the 197 countries that have agreed to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Those countries, the parties to the convention, come together every year and try to update their plans to address climate change.COP stands for Conference of the Parties. This is the 29th such gathering.In recent years, COP has grown from a relatively insular meeting of diplomats and policy experts into an enormous event that attracts tens of thousands of attendees, including business executives, the leaders of nonprofit groups and activists.When is COP29?The event is scheduled to take place from Nov. 11 to Nov. 22, but the gatherings have a history of going into overtime as negotiators scramble to secure final agreements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2024 Temperatures Are on Track for a Record High, Researchers Find

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      The new report also says that global warming has hit a threshold, at least temporarily, that countries had pledged to avoid.This year will almost certainly be the hottest year on record, beating the high set in 2023, researchers announced on Wednesday.The assessment, by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union agency that monitors global warming, also forecast that 2024 would be the first calendar year in which global temperatures consistently rose 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. That’s the temperature threshold that countries agreed, in the Paris Agreement, that the planet should avoid crossing. Beyond that amount of warming, scientists say, the Earth will face irreversible damage.Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are dangerously heating up the planet, imperiling biodiversity, increasing sea level rise and making extreme weather events more common and more destructive.“These type of events will get worse and they will get more frequent,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus. Recent storms like Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the flooding in Spain demonstrate just how devastating weather intensified by warming can be.Still, it’s important to note that a single year above 1.5 degrees Celsius does not mean the Paris Agreement target has been missed.Under the terms of the pact, for that to happen, temperatures would have to stay at or above 1.5 degrees over a 20-year period. Each year has natural variability, so one year that’s warmer or cooler is not as important as the general trend of warming. It’s that signal, the steady crawl of record hot year after record hot year, that has alarmed experts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why a Memphis Community Is Fighting Elon Musk’s Supercomputer

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      Residents say Mr. Musk’s data center for artificial intelligence is compounding their pollution burden and adding stress on the local electrical grid.Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is building what he says will be the world’s largest supercomputer. Its electricity needs will rival those of 100,000 homes.The supercomputer’s neighbors in southwest Memphis have a problem with that.The project, part of Mr. Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence business, sits in an old manufacturing plant on more than 550 acres. Before beginning operations there in July, xAI rolled in flatbed trucks loaded with almost 20 mobile power plants, fueled by natural gas, to help meet its electricity demands.Residents of the heavily industrial community — already home to an oil refinery, a steel mill and chemical plants — see no upside. They contend that Mr. Musk’s project has made pollution worse in an area already enveloped in smog.“We’re getting more and more days a year where it is unhealthy for us to go outside,” said KeShaun Pearson, president of Memphis Community Against Pollution and a lifelong resident of the area near the xAI site.The xAI supercomputer center in Memphis is being built at the site of a former appliance factory.Whitten Sabbatini for The New York TimesThe center is to be used to train artificial intelligence models on thousands of powerful computer servers.Whitten Sabbatini for The New York TimesSo far, xAI is using the Memphis facility to develop its artificial intelligence models on a network of thousands of high-powered computer servers. Some of its models are trained on data from Mr. Musk’s social media platform, X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More