Premier League clubs approved changes to associated party transaction (APT) rules on Friday in the face of opposition led by Manchester City.

The alterations were swiftly approved by 16 votes to four, with Aston Villa, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest standing with City. Clubs were asked at a shareholder meeting in central London to pass modest changes to rules relating to deals when they generate income from sources related to their ownership.

The proposed changes follow criticisms brought by an arbitration tribunal last month. The tribunal found that rules which allowed owners to extend interest-free loans to clubs should have been treated as APT deals, and clubs were found to have been denied timely access to a database of prior deals when trying to strike APT arrangements. Criticisms over the timeliness of the league’s adjudications on such deals were also made.

City have argued that the tribunal’s criticisms have undermined the league’s entire APT apparatus. The league says the tribunal was an endorsement of its broader rules and that, given the changes, they remain robust.

The league said in a statement on Friday: “At a Premier League shareholders’ meeting today, clubs approved changes to the league’s associated party transaction (APT) rules. The Premier League has conducted a detailed consultation with clubs – informed by multiple opinions from expert, independent leading counsel – to draft rule changes that address amendments required to the system.

“This relates to integrating the assessment of shareholder loans, the removal of some of the amendments made to APT rules earlier this year and changes to the process by which relevant information from the League’s ‘databank’ is shared with a club’s advisors.

“The purpose of the APT rules is to ensure clubs are not able to benefit from commercial deals or reductions in costs that are not at fair market value (FMV) by virtue of relationships with associated parties. These rules were introduced to provide a robust mechanism to safeguard the financial stability, integrity and competitive balance of the League.”

The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.

The petrostate’s stance came as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.

Last year, the UAE hosted a vital summit on the climate, Cop28, of which the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels was a key outcome. It marked the first time in 30 years of near-annual climate meetings that the issue had been directly addressed.

The requirement was contained in a document called the UAE Consensus. A UAE spokesperson told the Guardian: “The UAE Consensus is the culmination of an intense set of negotiations that proved the value of multilateralism.

“As a Cop decision, it is by definition unanimous. All parties must honour what they agreed. They must now focus on implementation by providing the means to take it forward with a robust NCQG [new collective quantified goal on climate finance]. We urge all parties to focus on this outcome.”

At this year’s talks, Cop29, Saudi Arabia and its allies have been attempting to roll back this commitment. They tried to sideline the discussion of the phaseout of fossil fuels into a separate track of the talks, under finance, and refused to allow the commitment to be included in crucial texts.

Experts on the talks told the Guardian privately that the UAE intervention against its close ally and “brother nation” Saudi Arabia was highly significant.

After Cop28, UAE instituted a “troika” system for UN Cops, whereby the three countries that were the current, immediate past and next hosts agreed to cooperate to try to ensure the talks run smoothly.

Saudi Arabia has been highly obstructive at these talks, according to insiders in the negotiating rooms. A spokesperson for the country told a plenary session of the Cop – which stands for “conference of the parties” under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – that Saudi Arabia would “not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels”.

That comment prompted Catherine McKenna, a former climate minister for Canada and chair of the UN group on net zero emissions commitments, to write on social media: “I am so sick of Saudi Arabia’s opposition to any suggestion of a transition away from fossil fuels. We are in a fossil fuel climate crisis. Please go hard everyone at #Cop29 and get it done.”

Cop29 in Azerbaijan is entering its final hours. As well as reaffirming the transition away from fossil fuels, the summit is supposed to produce a new global settlement on climate finance, to channel funds of at least $1tn a year to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impact of extreme weather.

But the conference has been mired in bitter rows. Developed countries have yet to confirm how much climate finance they will contribute to the “new collective quantified goal” from their own budgets, and how much of the remainder of the expected $1tn or more would have to be made up from private sector investment.

Developing countries want most of the money to come from public funds, and to take the form of grants rather than loans.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, who was also twice a UN climate envoy, told the Guardian poor countries might have to compromise on a figure of $300bn that was likely to be offered from the budgets of developed countries and from multilateral development banks such as the World Bank.

The United States believes Russia fired a never-before-fielded intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday in its attack on Ukraine, an escalation that analysts say could have implications for European missile defences.

Here’s what we know so far about the missile.

What kind of ballistic missile is it?

The US military said the Russian missile’s design was based on the design of Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The new missile was experimental and Russia likely possessed only a handful of them, officials said.

The Pentagon said the missile was fired with a conventional warhead but that Moscow could modify it if it wanted.

“It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of conventional or nuclear warheads,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said.

Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had earlier hinted that Russia would complete the development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) system after Washington and Berlin agreed to deploy long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026.

“The RS-26 was always [a] prime candidate,” Lewis said.

Singh said the new variant of the missile was considered “experimental” by the Pentagon. “It’s the first time that we’ve seen it employed on the battlefield … So that’s why we consider it experimental.”

US and UK sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an experimental nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.

Ukraine’s air force initially said the missile was an ICBM. While launching an IRBM sent a less threatening signal, the incident could still set off alarms and Moscow notified Washington briefly ahead of the launch, according to US officials.

Will Russia’s missile strike affect Nato?

Timothy Wright, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s development of new missiles might influence decisions in Nato countries regarding what air defence systems to purchase as well as which offensive capabilities to pursue.

A new US ballistic missile defence base in northern Poland has already drawn angry reactions from Moscow. The US base at Redzikowo is part of a broader Nato missile shield and is designed to intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Still, Putin said Thursday’s launch of the new IRBM was not a response to the base in Poland but instead to recent Ukrainian long-range strikes inside Russian territory with western weapons.

After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with US-made Atacms on 19 November and with British Storm Shadow missiles and US-made Himars on 21 November, Putin said.

What has Vladimir Putin said about the new missile?

The Russian president acknowledged in a television address to the nation that Moscow had struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new ballistic missile and said it was called “Oreshnik” (the hazel).

He said its deployment “was a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and short-range missiles”, and that Russia would “respond decisively and symmetrically” in the event of an escalation.

Moscow said it targeted a missile and defence firm in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where missile and space rocket company Pivdenmash, known as Yuzhmash by Russians, is based.

Putin said Russia was developing short- and medium0range missiles in response to the planned production and then deployment by the US of medium- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and Asia.

“I believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” the Russian president said, referring to the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty.

The US formally withdrew from the 1987 (INF) treaty with Russia in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin denied.

Donald Trump announced that he would nominate for attorney general Pam Bondi, the former Florida state attorney general, hours after the former representative Matt Gaetz withdrew in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans who had balked over a series of sexual misconduct allegations.

The move to name Bondi reflected Trump’s determination to install a loyalist as the nation’s top law enforcement official and marked another instance of Trump putting his personal lawyers in the justice department.

Trump almost immediately settled on Bondi as a replacement pick for Gaetz, according to people familiar with the matter. Bondi had not auditioned for the role and her loyalist credentials coupled with her willingness to defend Trump on television made her an attractive pick.

The fact that Bondi could count on broad support inside Trump’s world and the Senate Republican conference, in contrast with Gaetz who always faced an uphill struggle, also earned her the endorsement from most of Trump’s senior advisers on Thursday, the people said.

“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

“Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”

Should Bondi be confirmed by the Senate in the coming months, it would be a reward for years of her loyalty to Trump which started during the 2016 campaign, when she became an outspoken but fierce defender of his candidacy.

She also helped with Trump’s legal defense during his first impeachment trial, parroted claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and continued working as a surrogate through the 2024 campaign when she attended Trump’s criminal trial in New York.

Bondi’s elevation to lead the justice department would also come as a result of extraordinary serendipity, after Trump picked Gaetz almost on a whim after he decided against more conventional lawyers

The selection process for major positions has involved Trump pulling up each candidate on a bank of screens at his Mar-a-Lago club and looking for various qualities, including on their perceived loyalty and how they might play on television.

Trump did not like the initial list of names that included Mark Paoletta, the former counsel at the White House office of management and budget; Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey; and Robert Guiffra, co-chair of the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and decided he preferred a pugilist like Gaetz.

But the Gaetz nomination sank after a series of meetings on Wednesday with Republican senators. Later that evening, they broadly expressed to the Trump team their continued opposition to the Gaetz nomination, the people said.

On Thursday morning, Trump called Gaetz and told him that it was clear he did not have the votes in a rare moment of realpolitik for Trump. Gaetz agreed and took himself out of the running, one of the people said.

Gaetz told associates after he announced he was withdrawing his nomination that he faced the reality that at least three senators – Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski – and senator-elect John Curtis, would vote against him and block his confirmation, the people said.

From his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump said in a statement: “I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect.”

A long walk in the mountains last weekend brought sudden perspective to just how heavily the shoutiness and anger was weighing.

Suddenly there was only birdsong, the rustling tree canopies, the gentle burbling of the Snowy River and the wind whispering through the trunks of ancient ghost gums. This was anything but a quiet quietness. But it was the sound of a serenity that only nature can gift – a noise of extreme unplugged-ness if you like.

In recent years, probably since the pandemic lockdowns, I’ve been a big advocate of walking with my own silence. That is, while being unconnected to the cybersphere. So, no news or music or even audiobooks or phone calls. My rhythmic breath and the dogs’ panting a beat along with their padding paws beside me, the cawing gulls and, of course, the sounds of my environment – aircraft, ferry horns, traffic, people talking.

It is an urban soundtrack of never pristine silence. But in it I could always salvage catharsis, an elusive calm, a restorative balm for an occasionally anxious mind that is easily drawn to the pain of others of which, distressingly, there’s no global shortfall.

This was intensive thinking time. Sometimes it was even non-thinking time. I often found I could walk for an hour-and-a-half in a state of tuned-out meditative stasis, reaching home with a sense of emotional and creative renewal after which I’d sometimes have to remind myself of the route taken.

This was a good thing.

And, so, I’d stuck to this pattern of walking offline for a few years. But something changed in late June. It was in a hotel room while on holiday in Arizona that we watched the first presidential election debate. Until then, I’d not been following United States presidential politics too closely despite the magnitude of its implications. But watching the calamitous performance of the incumbent, it was as if I was immediately rewired into a state of cyber-hypervigilance (this, I know, happened to many others too).

There were never enough podcasts or polls or hot takes or newsbreaks or predictions. My concentration for anything else was all but shredded. I found myself reading foreign news sites at 3am, sieving through the murk of punditry for shards of hope America would not teeter into a fascism, vengeance and chaos embodied by the 45th and now soon-to-be-sworn in 47th president, and foreshadowed no more presciently than on 6 January 2021.

The recent 5 November presidential election and its aftermath still seems like the most consequential in recent global history, and certainly of my life – and that of my children and grandchildren.

Across the world the political and social right (including in Australia) is high-fiving, of course, emboldened by the domestic possibilities of drawing from and transplanting elements of the politics of hate and derision.

Meanwhile, longstanding authoritarian fascists (none more so than in Russia, whose dictator must delight in watching the next US presidency do the Kremlin’s work for it by voraciously eating its country’s once-revered democratic institutions from the inside while nurturing oligarchy, public-private conflicts and potential kleptocracy) must smirk with the irony of it all.

The election has been done and dusted for a few weeks. But up until last weekend I was still bingeing on pods, tuning into the Democratic party recriminations, and not least trying to reconcile Kamala’s assurance that it’s “going to be OK’’ with her wholly credible campaign message the would-be 47th president was a madman/existential threat to democracy.

And then, last Saturday, I disconnected in the mountains. A few hours without the shoutiness and the anger and the triumphalism. This was the reset I needed.

Autocracy and its twin of subverted democracy blossom amid silence and exhausted, depleted opposition. So I’m not, by any means, proposing a permanent zone-out or to turn my back on informed knowledge about how it might impact globally and domestically. What has just happened in the US will have profound implications for Australia in a forthcoming election year on everything from the tone of political discourse to foreign affairs and defence, climate change, emissions targets, renewable energy, fossil fuels and immigration – and the rights of minorities.

The cultural/political trolling embodied by the very foreshadowed appointment of the next US cabinet and the symbolism of reactionary, spiteful initiatives already vowed against the marginalised, and how they might enable would-be replicants elsewhere, demand extreme watchfulness.

But effective vigilance also requires energy and strength, mental and emotional recharge and balance.

Now – in the interregnum before January’s inauguration – is the time to reset. To re-embrace the peace and quiet to be found in unpluggedness, so that the aural wonders of life and nature might give strength against the bellicosity and anger of a vastly changed, ever more dangerous world.

The coronation of King Charles in May 2023 cost taxpayers at least £72m, official figures have revealed.

The cost of policing the ceremony was £21.7m, with a further £50.3m in costs racked up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

About 20 million people in Britain watched Charles crowned at Westminster Abbey on TV, substantially fewer than the 29 million Britons who had watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.

The coronation ceremony was attended by dignitaries from around the world, and a star-studded concert took place at Windsor Castle the following night.

The annual report and accounts of DCMS, the lead department in Rishi Sunak’s government that worked with the royal household on the coronation, stated that the department “successfully delivered on the central weekend of His Majesty King Charles III’s coronation, enjoyed by many millions both in the UK and across the globe”.

It described the coronation as a “once-in-a-generation moment” that enabled the “entire country to come together in celebration”, as well as offering “a unique opportunity to celebrate and strengthen our national identity and showcase the UK to the world”.

Republic, which campaigns to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state and more democratic political system, described the coronation as an “obscene” waste of taxpayers’ money.

“I would be very surprised if £72m was the whole cost,” the Republic CEO, Graham Smith, told the Guardian.

As well as the Home Office policing and DCMS costs included in the figures, he said the Ministry of Defence, Transport for London, fire brigades and local councils also incurred costs related to the coronation, with other estimates putting the totalspend at between £100m and £250m.

“But even that kind of money – £72m – is incredible,” Smith added. “It’s a huge amount of money to spend on one person’s parade when there was no obligation whatsoever in the constitution or in law to have a coronation, and when we were facing cuts to essential services.

“It was a parade that Charles insisted on at huge expense to the taxpayer, and this is on top of the huge inheritance tax bill he didn’t [have to] pay, on top of the £500m-a-year cost of the monarchy.”

Under a clause agreed in 1993 by the then prime minister, John Major, any inheritance passed “sovereign to sovereign” avoids the 40% levy applied to assets valued at more than £325,000.

Smith added: “It was an extravagance we simply didn’t have to have. It was completely unnecessary and a waste of money in the middle of a cost of living crisis in a country that is facing huge amounts of child poverty.

“When kids are unable to afford lunches at school, to spend over £70m on this parade is obscene.”

Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock.

In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“It’s finance, and it’s absolutely vital, and it’s the responsibility of the developed world,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “But you can’t squeeze what isn’t squeezable.”

Rich countries have yet to make any formal offer of finance to the poor world as of Thursday night, even as two weeks of talks stretched into their final official day on Friday. The summit is focused on finding $1tn (£790bn) a year for poor nations to shift to a low-CO₂ economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

But the rich world is expected to offer only about $300bn a year at most in public finance, far less than many developing countries hoped for. The developed world is likely to argue that the remainder of the $1tn can be made up from other sources, including private sector investment, carbon trading and potential new sources such as taxes on fossil fuels.

Robinson said $300bn should be “a minimum” and developed countries must also take steps to ensure that poor countries can access private sector finance and loans much more cheaply than at present, by “de-risking” finance for them. That could include giving guarantees for loans, which costs developed countries nothing but can make a big difference to gaining access to investment for the poor.

Many poor countries are asking for a much higher proportion of the $1tn to come from rich country’s budgets, rather than from the private sector or new taxes. The least developed countries bloc, for instance, said they wanted $900bn of the total to come from public finance.

Robinson said those ideas were “fine in principle, but not in the reality of government budgets”.

She conceded that this view would be controversial. “I think probably developing countries would say that’s too low,” said Robinson. “But in my view, with the other parts – the solidarity levies [such as fossil fuel taxes], the World Bank, and the private sector, you can get up to $1tn. That’s the point.

“That’s the world we live in. Budgets are stretched. The UK is playing a really good role, but they don’t have the money. We know it, you know, we all know. There’s no point trying to squeeze what is not squeezable.”

A core of finance from public sources of about $300bn, surrounded by other sources such as new taxes, carbon trading and private sector investment, is in line with an influential academic paper published by Nicholas Stern and other leading economists last week. TheIndependent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance found that about $500bn a year should come from private sector investment as part of $1tn for developing countries by 2030 and $1.3tn by 2035.

Developing countries were reluctant to comment as the negotiations are entering a crucial phase. Nevertheless, several civil society groups told the Guardian that developing countries should stick to their demands for more of the money to come from public sources.

Thato Gabaitse, a climate justice advocate for the Botswana chapter of the campaign group We, the World, said: “African countries have been clear on their $1.3tn ask. Out of that, $600bn would be provision and the rest mobilisation. Global north countries are showing a willingness to tip the scales, putting even more lives at risk in the global south and eroding the goodwill of global south countries. Keeping the process alive also means delivering finance without undermining the fundamentals of the Paris agreement. There is fatigue from the global south with the lack of ambition from rich countries. It’s time for the developed countries to put a future on the table and negotiate in good faith.”

Charlene Watson, a research associate at the ODI group, said developed countries should offer at least $500bn. “While less than what developing countries are asking for, a solid commitment of $500bn in highly concessional public finance – not in grant-equivalent terms, as the draft text suggests – could be the ‘landing zone’ we need to finalise the negotiations,” she said. “$500bn is robust enough – and enough of a statement – to mobilise the remainder up to that important $1tn mark.”

Robinson also said that China and other major economies still classed as developing must also pay towards climate finance. “It’s also the responsibility of the rich so-called developing countries [such as] China to take their responsibility properly. I know China does support developing countries, mainly with loans, but it needs to become more part of the way forward … in a way that’s transparent.”

Rich countries must also fulfil their responsibilities by agreeing deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, Robinson said. Only by doing so, as well as providing clear guarantees they will deliver the cash they promise, could they rebuild trust with the poor world, she said.

Relations between rich and poor nations were also strained, she said. “The trust is very fragile at the moment. There’s an anger, because the impacts of climate are much worse in the developing world,” she said. “The impact in poor countries is so devastating.”

On Thursday morning, the host country, Azerbaijan, published draft texts covering important aspects of the talks, but they were widely criticised as inadequate. The texts on a global financial settlement, called a new collective quantified goal, did not contain vital numbers such as the amount developed countries would be willing to contribute.

Other texts failed to reaffirm a vital commitment made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”. Saudi Arabia and some of its allies have been pushing to remove such a reaffirmation from the outcome of Cop29.

New drafts of these texts, with the finance numbers included, are not expected until Friday afternoon. This is likely to push the conclusion of the talks into the weekend and into a race against the clock, as many developing country delegations are planning to leave.

There is pressure to conclude these finance talks in Baku, because Joe Biden is still in the White House until January. When Donald Trump takes office, he is expected to be hostile to all aspects of cooperation on the climate crisis.

Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman, withdrew from consideration to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general on Thursday, amid intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct, ending the brief nomination of one of Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks

After meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Gaetz determined that his nomination was “becoming a distraction to the critical work” of the new Trump administration, he explained on X.

“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s [justice department] must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz said.

“I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”

The announcement comes a little more than a week after Trump said he was nominating Gaetz to be attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

A staunch Trump ally disliked by some fellow Republicans in Congress, Gaetz always faced an uphill battle to be confirmed. He came under intense scrutiny last week over allegations he had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl.

The justice department declined to charge Gaetz last year as part of a sex-trafficking investigation. But details of his encounter and relationships were beginning to seep out. Just before he announced he was withdrawing his nomination, CNN reported that the 17-year-old woman he is alleged to have had sex with told the House ethics committee there had been a second sexual encounter with Gaetz.

ABC News and the New York Times reported earlier this week on records of Venmo transactions connecting Gaetz to women who said that he paid them for sex.

Gaetz’s announcement comes one day after the House ethics committee deadlocked over releasing its report on the allegations. At least one House Democrat on the committee, Representative Sean Casten of Illinois, said on Thursday he would continue to push for the full release of the Gaetz report.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump, who had reportedly been calling senators to lobby for Gaetz’s confirmation, said that “Matt has a wonderful future”.

“I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General,” he wrote. “He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!”

A staunch Trump ally known for theatrics such as wearing a gas mask on the house floor, Gaetz resigned from Congress the day Trump announced his nomination. It’s unclear who Trump will now pick to lead the justice department, which Trump has pledged to use to prosecute his enemies.

Gaetz’s withdrawal comes as his pick to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, faces accusations of sexual assault. A police report made public this week contains allegations from a woman regarding a 2017 encounter with Hegseth in which she says he took her phone, blocked her from leaving his hotel room, and sexually assaulted her. Hegseth has denied the allegations.

“Matt Gaetz was a ridiculous, horrible and dangerous AG selection. That Republican senators were not willing to rubber stamp his nomination is a hopeful sign that a modicum of sanity persists in Washington,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a watchdog group, in a statement. “But Gaetz was not the only Trump nomination threatening America and there’s every reason to worry about who Trump will appoint in Gaetz’s stead.”

The United States and India have made the greatest progress among the world’s top 20 economies in implementing climate policies since the 2016 Paris Agreement, a study commissioned by the Guardian has found.

The data underscores the importance of political leadership and international coordination, both of which are coming under intense pressure ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has threatened to pull the US out of the United Nations climate treaty.

Over the past nine years, the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies have together introduced policies that are likely to reduce CO2 discharges by 6.9 gigatons by 2030, the report by Climate Action Tracker shows.

Although this is not enough to keep global heating within the Paris target of 1.5C to 2C above preindustrial levels, the authors of the study say it is a substantial improvement on what was forecast in 2015, showing the Cop process – despite its many flaws – has had some effect in reducing the climate dangers facing the world.

Instead of emissions increasing by 20% between 2015 and 2030, as was predicted at the start of that period, the new policies – mostly to support renewable energy and phase out high-polluting power plants – adopted by most countries mean that CO2 emissions are now projected to return to 2015 levels by the end of this decade. This change in the policy scenario has contributed to avoided warming of about 0.9C since Paris.

“This is nothing to brush off. This is a major improvement in the group of countries covering more than 80% of global emissions,” said Leonardo Nascimento, an analyst at Climate Action Tracker, who compiled the statistics. “There is progress at the international level. I completely disagree that Cop is a useless process.”

There are, however, concerns that this already insufficient progress is stalling: Firstly because recent Cop agendas have been dominated by host nations that plan to expand fossil fuel production, including Egypt (Cop27), the United Arab Emirates (Cop28), Azerbaijan (the ongoing Cop29), and Brazil (next year’s Cop30). Prominent critics have said the process needs reform because it is “not fit for purpose.”

The other major threat comes from Trump, who will take power in January. Once again, by taking the world’s most powerful nation out of the Paris Agreement negotiations. Conservative supporters urge him to go further and entirely remove the US from the Cop process and roll back the renewable incentives introduced during the administration of Joe Biden.

This is a worry for two reasons. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which supports solar, wind, electric vehicles and energy efficiency, is the main reason the US leads the G20 in projected CO2 reductions from 2015 to 2030. It accounts for two gigatons, far ahead of second-place India with 1.4Gt, and third-place European Union, and the UK with 1.1Gt. Depending on how far Trump goes with his rollback, these gains could be lost.

The other reason is the message this sends to the world. Different countries may be less inclined to accelerate the energy transition and provide funds for mitigation, adaptation and compensation for developing nations if the biggest economy steps back.

With global emissions still rising despite two years of record heat, frustrations with Cop are growing. Climate Action Tracker says current policies put the temperature rise on track for 2.7C by the end of the century, which would be calamitous.

Analysts said it was essential for nations to step up rather than back.

Relative to their size, many smaller countries have made greater progress than the US in trimming emissions. And some large emerging economies are moving in the right direction. China – the world’s biggest emitter – has invested heavily in renewables and is forecast to hit some of its 2030 climate targets six years early and perhaps peak its CO2 output next year. “It is not just developed countries that are doing a lot, it is also developing nations with big populations and big inequality,” Nascimento said.

The analyst said that under the most optimistic projections, global emissions may finally peak next year – though this long-awaited moment has been wrongly predicted on multiple occasions in the past. The key, he said, is to maintain the political momentum behind the technological and business trends that have made wind and solar cheaper than coal, oil and gas.

“Fossil fuels are growing in a linear fashion, while renewables are growing exponentially. The displacement is happening faster than expected,” he said. “But we must not underestimate the impact of Trump. If the US, the world’s second-largest emitter, were to permanently walk away from its commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050, our optimistic scenario for global temperature could increase by a few tenths of a degree, which would be very significant. It also depends on whether countries continue to pursue climate action in the light of cheap renewables and whether other leaders like EU, China, Brazil and others step up and remain united.”

“Despite improvements in global climate policy, the overall direction of travel remains bleak,” Nascimento said. “Countries need to substantially scale up past efforts to keep any chance of meeting the 1.5C goal. The pace of improvement is simply not enough.”