Days of severe storms have been forecast for every mainland state and territory in Australia this week, with possible wind gusts, heavy rain, large hail and flash flooding on the cards.

Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino said “millions of lightning strikes” were also expected across the country.

“We have a number of low pressure troughs sitting over Australia that are interacting with very warm and humid air coming in from the oceans surrounding Australia, which are warmer than average for this time of year,” he said.

In Sydney, temperatures were forecast to remain in the mid-20s for the rest of the week and into the weekend. Melbourne could expect to reach 25C on Tuesday and 20C on Wednesday, warming up towards the weekend with temperatures in the 30s forecast for Saturday and Sunday.

But thunderstorms were forecast to continue across parts of New South Wales, south-east Queensland and central Australia on Tuesday, while northern and Western Australia were set to bear the brunt of low pressure troughs in the latter half of the week.

Dean Narramore, senior meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, said Tasmania was the only state that may escape the wild weather.

“We’re just looking at days of severe storms across parts of the country, and particularly north-east New South Wales and south-east Queensland for the coming days, with Wednesday probably being the bigger day,” he said.

Severe thunderstorms could mean damaging wind gusts and heavy rain with the potential for flash flooding or large hail, he added.

There was also the potential for severe thunderstorms in central Australia – near the border of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory – with large hail, damaging winds and heavy rainfall likely, he said.

Meanwhile, in parts of northern Australia, severe to locally extreme heatwaves with 40C temperatures were forecast for Marble Bar in Western Australia throughout the week, expected to peak at 45C on Wednesday.

“We’ll start to see that ease as we head towards the weekend, at least for the Kimberley and the Top End,” Narramore said, though heatwave conditions were expected to continue around Cape York into the weekend.

The recent State of the Climate report, released by the bureau and CSIRO, said global heating caused by burning fossil fuels was fuelling warmer ocean temperatures and longer, more intense heatwaves.

The wreck of the long-lost US warship USS Edsall, sent to the bottom of the sea during the second world war by the Japanese, has been discovered, US and Australian officials announced on Monday.

The warship was sunk on 1 March 1942, three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The Edsall was traveling across the Indian Ocean south of Java when it was sunk by Japanese dive bombers.

The Edsall’s formidable display in evading attacks before its demise led the Japanese to dub the ship “the dancing mouse”.

“I am honored to acknowledge the role #AusNavy played in discovering the wreck of @usnavy USS Edsall, a warship that holds a special place in our shared naval histories,” wrote Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia, in an Instagram post to commemorate Veterans Day.

“We will now be able to preserve this important memorial and hope that the families of the heroes who died there will know their loved ones rest in peace,” said Kennedy in an accompanying video.

The second world war ship, only about 300ft in length, was carrying 153 sailors and several dozen army air forces pilots and soldiers. It had sustained damage from an earlier attack and deemed unfit for combat but was deployed to aid another ship when it encountered Japanese naval forces at about 4pm.

Despite its damaged state, the Edsall successfully dodged attacks for over an hour, swerving to avoid the hundreds of fired shells. The Edsall counterattacked with a smokescreen and torpedoes before eventually being overcome by Japanese dive bombers.

Historians say that a few people on board survived the sinking ship but were immediately picked up by enemy forces and later beheaded in a prison camp.

According to the US navy, the wreck was first discovered late last year south of Australia’s remote Christmas Island submerged in 18,000ft of water. The US cooperated with Australian officials to confirm the wreck was in fact the Edsall.

Mark Hammond, chief of the Royal Australian Navy, said in the video that the wreck was found by the MV Stoker, an Australian naval support ship that is normally used for hydrographic surveying.

The wreckage was subsequently examined with underwater robots and sonar. The Australian navy has not disclosed what the Stoker was doing when the Edsall was found, citing “operational security sensitivities”, according to the Washington Post.

Donald Trump has picked Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), vowing the appointment will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions” by the regulator.

Trump, who oversaw the rollback of more than 100 environmental rules when he last was US president, said that Zeldin was a “true fighter for America First policies” and that “he will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet”.

Zeldin, a Republican who was in the House of Representatives until last year as a member for a New York district that covers part of Long Island, said the nomination was an “honor” and that he was looking forward to cutting red tape as the EPA administrator.

“We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI,” Zeldin wrote on X. “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

Zeldin, 44, is considered a close Trump ally and ran in a surprisingly close race for New York governor in 2022, before being pipped by Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. During the campaign, Zeldin attacked Hochul’s “far-left climate agenda” and assailed Democrats for allegedly forcing people to drive electric cars.

The EPA nominee, who will have to be confirmed by the US Senate, has rarely spoken out on environmental or climate issues, although he said in 2014 he was “not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are” with global heating, and added in 2018 that he did not support the Paris climate agreement, which Trump is again expected to withdraw the US from.

Zeldin, who has a score of just 14% from the League of Conservation Voters on his votes on environmental issues in his 15 years in Congress, is expected to oversee an overhaul of the EPA that will rival anything seen since its foundation in 1970.

An exodus of staff is expected from the agency, with employees already raising fears they will be subject to political interference and that their work to protect Americans from toxic chemicals and planet-heating emissions from cars, trucks and power plants will be torn up.

“Naming an unqualified, anti-American worker who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters,” Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said of Zeldin’s nomination.

“Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin – or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA’s mission.”

The naming of Zeldin, less than a week after Trump won the presidential election, is far quicker than his previous term in the White House, when he took until December to name Scott Pruitt as his pick for the EPA.

Pruitt resigned in 2018 amid a flurry of ethics scandals, including allegations that he gave staffers improper pay raises, that he constructed an expensive soundproof phone booth in his office, and that he tasked employees with fetching him moisturizer and a favorite mattress.

Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.

The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.

The goal will be one of the first national plans on cutting carbon, known as “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs in UN jargon, to be unveiled at Cop29, the crucial UN climate summit taking place in Azerbaijan this week, and is expected to be one of the most ambitious of any government at the talks.

The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.

The UK is one of the first countries to announce an NDC, which are not due until February next year. Campaigners have found the NDCs submitted so far “underwhelming”. The NDC submitted by the previous Cop host, the United Arab Emirates, was described as “greenwashing” by 350.org. A submission by the next host, Brazil, was also criticised for being insufficient and called “misaligned” by Climate Observatory.

Friends of the Earth’s head of campaigns, Rosie Downes, said: “With the warning signals flashing red, a planet battered by increasingly severe floods, storms and heatwaves, and the election of climate denier President Trump, the need for climate leadership by the UK has never been more urgent. Starmer’s 2035 carbon-reduction pledge is a step in the right direction but must be seen as a floor to the level of ambition, not a ceiling. Deeper, faster cuts are needed to help avert the climate collision course we are on.

“Furthermore, if these targets are to be credible, they must be backed by a clear plan to ensure they are met. The UK’s existing 2030 commitment is currently way off course.”

On Monday, the World Meteorological Organization followed the EU space programme in saying 2024 was on track to become the hottest year on record.

Few big countries have yet come up with NDCs. The Cop29 talks opened on Monday, but will ratchet up a gear on Tuesday when scores of heads of state and government fly in from around the world.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey and Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, are among the other leaders attending. Joe Biden of the US, Xi Jinping of China, Olaf Scholz of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France will not be at the talks, with the latter two preoccupied by domestic political crises.

On Monday, delegates heard stark warnings from the UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, and the Cop president and Azerbaijani environment minister, Mukhtar Babayev, urging countries to step up with strong commitments on the climate before it is too late.

This summit, at which nearly 200 countries are expected to be represented, will focus on climate finance – ways of getting poor countries access to the money they need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

About $1tn (£780bn) is expected to be needed each year by 2035, but developed countries have agreed to ensure only $100bn a year from public funds.

The host country claimed an early win in the talks by signing off on a deal intended to make carbon offsets work for the planet, and as a source of cash for poor countries.

Diplomats have given the green light to rules that govern the trade of “carbon credits”, breaking a deadlock that has lasted years and paving the way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad while delaying expensive emission cuts at home. But critics warned the rules were rushed through without following proper process.

Carbon offsets, or carbon credits, are awarded to countries with large forests that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as wind or solar farms. Selling them should be a source of cash for the developing world, but years of argument over how exactly such a system would work have prevented the widespread uptake of trading systems.

The beginnings of a potential system for trading were set out in article 6 of the Paris climate agreement in 2015, but countries have struggled to put the idea into practice, owing to disagreements over technical issues, such as how to avoid double counting, and ideological differences, as some countries are wary of using carbon offsets.

Azerbaijan hopes the progress on article 6 will clear the way for more substantive talks, for the rest of the scheduled fortnight, on a goal of making $1tn a year in climate finance available to poorer countries by 2035.

However, many civil society groups remain concerned about article 6. Erika Lennon, an attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said: “We’ve seen over and over again how carbon markets are not doing what they claim to be doing, as well as market projects that violate people’s rights. If they don’t have strong rules in place to prevent all of the abuses, it can totally undermine the integrity of the Paris agreement.”

Diplomats have greenlit key rules that govern the trade of “carbon credits”, breaking a years-long deadlock and paving the way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad while delaying expensive emission cuts at home.

The agreement, reached late on the first day of Cop29 in Azerbaijan, was hailed by the hosts as an early win at climate talks that have been snubbed by prominent world leaders and clouded by the threat of a US retreat from climate diplomacy after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.

But critics have warned the rules were rushed through without following proper process.

“We welcome this positive momentum,” said Mukhtar Babayev, the president of Cop29, praising a “spirit of compromise that I hope will inspire all our work here in Baku”.

The rules deal with some of the final hurdles to creating a system in which countries can buy credits for removing or avoiding planet-heating pollution in other parts of the world – for instance, by planting trees or saving rainforests – and count the progress toward their own emissions targets.

The agreement is expected to provide the clarity needed to trade emissions within a global carbon market, supervised by the UN, that would be open to companies as well as countries. A separate article on the trade of carbon credits between individual nations will be addressed later in the Cop29 negotiations.

Carbon markets are a polarising force in climate policy. Supporters say they help direct crucial funds to saving the planet while critics point to the tattered history of fraudulent and harmful projects – particularly in the voluntary carbon market that some companies have enthusiastically embraced – that have eroded trust in the concept and driven calls for stricter rules.

Efforts to agree on carbon market rules – known in Cop jargon as article 6 – have been a persistent stumbling block in UN talks to stop the planet from heating. Diplomats at the last climate talks rejected proposals from a UN supervisory body that was tasked with recommending solutions for countries to debate.

This year, with pressure to make progress on carbon markets riding high, the group took a different approach, and adopted new standards on methods and removals while recommending the Cop29 negotiators give it the green light.

Isa Mulder, a policy expert at the nonprofit group Carbon Market Watch, said that adopting the rules on the first day of the summit without discussion “undermined trust” in the UN climate conference process. “Kicking off Cop29 with a backdoor deal … sets a poor precedent for transparency and proper governance,” she said.

The rules are expected to reduce the risk of double-counting emissions – a big concern of critics – and include stronger safeguards to protect human rights.

But the text also leaves many unanswered questions, said Mulder, such as how to deal with projects whose carbon-saving successes face a risk of reversal.

Olga Gassan-zade, a former chair of the article 6 supervisory body and one of its current members, said: “The criticisms of the process are fair – but it was also critically important to operationalise article 6.4 as soon as possible to scale up the delivery of carbon finance to the developing world.”

Critics of carbon markets have pointed to a history of offset projects overpromising and underdelivering, with wildfires burning through forests that were supposed to be protected and emissions from renewable energy projects being counted on balance books even though they would probably have been built anyway.

Erika Lennon, an attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law, said: “We’ve seen over and over again how carbon markets are not doing what they claim to be doing, as well as market projects that violate people’s rights.

“If they don’t have strong rules in place to prevent all of the abuses, it can totally undermine the integrity of the Paris agreement.”

Using LED lighting on the underside of surfboards or kayaks could deter great white shark attacks, new research suggests.

In an Australian-led study using seal-shaped decoys, underside lighting disrupted the ability of great whites to see silhouettes against the sunlight above, reducing the rates at which the sharks followed and attacked the artificial prey. The brighter the lights, the more effective the deterrent was.

The study’s lead author, Dr Laura Ryan of Macquarie University in Sydney, said white sharks seemed to rely on the visual cues of a dark object silhouetted against a lighter background.

“If you flip that to a light object on a dark background, then it doesn’t seem to be something they recognise as prey,” she said.

Ryan’s previous research on great whites suggests that attacks on humans may be a case of mistaken identity. The animal has a far lower visual acuity – the ability to see shapes and details – than humans.

Her work has suggested that juvenile great white sharks, from below, are unlikely to be able to clearly tell seals apart from swimmers or people paddling surfboards.

Other research has shown that sharks are colour-blind or at best have only limited colour perception abilities.

The new study, conducted in Mossel Bay, South Africa, involved towing decoys behind a boat for dozens of hours.

The researchers initially found success by covering the underside of the decoy entirely in lights. “But if you’re actually going to come up with something to protect people, [entirely] covering a surfboard … is just not practical because it’s a huge amount of lighting, which needs a huge amount of battery power,” Ryan said.

The researchers experimented with more sparse lighting options, finding that horizontal stripes of LED lights had a similar deterrent effect. “When you do horizontal stripes, the silhouette [appears] wider than it is long, so it’s less like a seal,” Ryan said.

Longitudinal strips of light, however, were not effective, nor were strobe lights, which gave the sharks momentary glimpses of the decoy silhouette. “Interestingly, just that small glimpse of the entire silhouette was enough for the white sharks to start biting the decoys,” Ryan said.

The scientists towed the seal decoy to encourage the white sharks to breach – one form of hunting involving rapid acceleration to the surface to catch prey. They say more research is required into shark behaviour with static decoys, which would resemble surfers waiting to catch a wave rather than actively paddling.

The team is currently testing a surfboard prototype with fitted lighting. “Surfers can be a little bit fussy with their surfboards,” Ryan said. “As a surfer, I want it to be useable.”

Globally, most shark bites are associated with people surfing or participating in other board sports. Fatal shark bites, though rare, are mostly due to great whites.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, noted it would be important to test whether lighting was also effective in deterring other species involved in attacks on humans, such as bull sharks and tiger sharks, as these have different predation behaviours.

You’ve likely already heard the worst-case takes: that a second Trump presidency is a disaster for the climate, and will almost certainly lead to emissions being higher than they otherwise would have been. There’s obvious truth in that. But it’s also true that Trump 2.0 will almost certainly not play out in line with immediate post-election predictions.

We have been here before. As the writer and analyst Ketan Joshi points out, in 2016 it was projected that Trump’s policies would lead to a steep rise in US emissions – a fork in the road at odds with the decline forecast if Hillary Clinton had won.

In reality, the country’s climate-heating pollution over the past eight years has been roughly what was predicted if the Democrats had been in the White House. There have been a bunch of reasons for this.

Most obviously, Trump promised to bring coal power back but failed, spectacularly. Coal-fired generation fell nearly 40% during his first term as investors and markets abandoned it as a viable, affordable energy source. States and cities ramped up climate action in response to Trump’s rise and private capital began to respond to the signal from the landmark 2015 Paris agreement even as the US pulled out of that deal.

Of course, the pandemic also dented emissions once shutdowns kicked in. But the rebound as the economy reopened did not take US emissions back to where they were before. The most recent data has it slightly below the 2016 projection of life under a Clinton presidency.

Looking ahead, there are a few things we can say.

Trump will again withdraw the US from the Paris agreement, and possibly the overarching UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. At least some of the extraordinary US$370bn (A$560bn) clean energy support in the Inflation Reduction Act is quite likely to be rolled back even though it is driving investment in Republican states – logic is not necessarily a winner here. The US is highly unlikely to meet the 2030 emissions reduction target (a 52% cut below 2005 levels). And the election result will shape what happens at the fortnight-long Cop29 climate summit that began in Azerbaijan overnight.

Beyond that, there is much more we don’t know. Trump wants the country to “drill, baby, drill”, including in Alaska’s Arctic wilderness, but it is unclear what this will mean in practice. Fossil fuel extraction in the US already reached record levels under the Biden administration, much of it for export, before approval of liquified natural gas developments was paused this year. Support for clean energy will survive just because it makes clear economic sense, but it will be a while before the scale is clear.

What we do know is that the most consequential decisions affecting the climate over the next four years will not be made in Washington.

It was already true, but more than ever the most important gauges of climate progress will be what happens in China – easily the world’s largest polluter due to its extraordinary population, rising middle class and role as the globe’s main manufacturer – and how, where and when global investors deploy trillions of dollars in capital.

As always, the Chinese story on the climate crisis is mixed. According to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a respected China analyst from Finnish thinktank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the country’s domestic emissions have flatlined over the past two quarters, leaving open a slight possibility they could fall this year.

If that happens, it will be a significant moment and ahead of schedule – China’s global commitment is that its climate pollution will peak before 2030 on the way to net zero before 2060. But it will need to do much more to play its part in staving off the worst effects of global heating.

China continues to go big on solar power, having installed 163 gigawatts of new solar (more than twice Australia’s entire electricity capacity) in the first nine months of this year alone. Its solar and wind generation are up 44% and 24% compared with a year ago, respectively. Nuclear power played a smaller role, creeping up only 4%.

After falling for months, its coal and gas-fired generation also rose by smaller amounts in the third quarter as record temperatures prompted people to reach for their air conditioners and ramp up electricity use. But emissions from steel, cement and oil were down as construction activity continued to drop.

The bottom line is that China is easily the world’s biggest driver of renewable energy – it has more than a third of the global capacity – while it also continues pursuing fossil fuel interests. Delegates at the Cop29 talks are watching for signs of whether it will respond to Trump’s return by taking a more aggressive leadership role on climate – not to save the planet, but to advance its strategic interests.

On the question of global investment in non-fossil fuel energy: it has grown dramatically over the past five years, increasing by nearly two-thirds, and is forecast to reach US$2tn this year. Most of the spending is on renewable power and energy efficiency, with support for energy grids and storage making up a smaller chunk and nuclear a much smaller piece again.

The solar and wind component, in particular, will need to continue to expand to meet a global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030. A potential side effect if Trump delivers on his promise to scrap the huge tax and production credits for clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act may be that it increases competition between other countries, including Australia, to attract green spending.

All of this hangs over Cop29, where the main focus will be negotiations over a climate finance goal to help the developing world – and how to avoid backsliding on last year’s agreement that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels.

Unpromisingly, the talks are being held in a petrostate, and the Azerbaijan deputy energy minister has been caught agreeing to help set up fossil fuel deals during the summit. Combined with events in the US, it is the sort of news that can make a cynic of even the most optimistic observers.

My advice? Don’t ignore it, but remember it is not the whole story.

The climate crisis is happening and will get worse, but the drive to limit it and clean up economies continues. There are areas where headway is being made. Just don’t expect it to be a straight line.

The Kremlin has denied reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, spoke to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, calling the media reports “pure fiction”.

The Washington Post first reported that a call had taken place, citing unidentified sources, and said that Trump had told Putin that he should not escalate the Ukraine war. Reuters also reported on a call.

“It is completely untrue. It is pure fiction; it is simply false information,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said when asked about the call. “There was no conversation.”

“This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is being published now, sometimes even in fairly reputable publications,” Peskov said.

Peskov added that Putin had no specific plans to speak to Trump at present.

According to the Washington Post, Trump reminded Putin of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”. It added that Trump expressed interest in follow-up conversations on “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon”.

The reported call took place after Putin on Thursday congratulated Trump on his election win and expressed admiration for the way Trump reacted to an assassination attempt during the campaign.

Peskov has a history of dismissing media reports that later prove to be true; most recently, he labelled reports of North Korean soldiers arriving in Russia as “fake news”, despite credible audio and visual evidence confirming their presence. Still, the Kremlin’s swift denial of the phone call with Trump is likely to raise eyebrows, especially given that both leaders have previously expressed openness to dialogue.

Peskov on Monday also accused European leaders of continuing to seek a “strategic defeat” of Russia. Peskov was responding to a question about the possibility that Britain would allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow long-range missile systems to hit targets inside Russia.

The Kremlin repeatedly said Putin was ready to discuss Ukraine with the west but that it did not mean he was willing to alter Moscow’s demands.

On 14 June, Putin staked out a maximalist position for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw all its troops from all the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.

During the election campaign, Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “within a day”, but did not explain how he would do so. Trump also spoke to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Wednesday, according to media reports.

Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars worth of US military and economic aid to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, funding that Trump has repeatedly criticised and railed against with other Republican lawmakers.

The US president, Joe Biden, will host Trump for a traditional post-election meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, where the current US leader is expected to try to convince the president-elect not to pull support from Ukraine when he takes office.

The meeting will take place against the backdrop of reports that Russia, with support from North Korean soldiers, is planning a significant assault to drive Ukrainian forces out of its western Kursk region.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Moscow had assembled a force of 50,000 troops, including North Koreans, in the region bordering Ukraine for an attack. According to US intelligence, 10,000 North Korean soldiers have arrived in Russia, a figure that Ukraine’s military intelligence chief says includes 500 officers and three generals.

In August, Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into the Kursk region, capturing settlements within Russian territory in what was widely seen as a major embarrassment for Putin. However, Russia has gradually recaptured some of this territory and also made steady advances across much of eastern Ukraine.

Businesses in the private sector must stump up cash for the developing world to invest in a low-carbon economy or face the consequences of climate breakdown, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Mukhtar Babayev, the environment minister of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s climate conference, wrote in Monday’s Guardian: “The onus cannot fall entirely on government purses. Unleashing private finance for developing countries’ transition has long been an ambition of climate talks.

“Without the private sector, there is no climate solution. The world needs more funds and it needs them faster. History shows we can mobilise the resources required; it’s now a matter of political will.”

His words come as scores of heads of state and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries gathered in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for the UN Cop29 climate summit, which opened on Monday.

The meeting has been overshadowed by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to remove the US from the Paris climate agreement and scrap commitments to cut carbon emissions. Scientists have said the world is likely to exceed key temperature limits as a result.

At Cop29, countries will try to forge a new global framework for providing the funds that developing nations need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of worsening extreme weather. Poor countries want climate finance to ramp up from about $100bn a year today to at least $1tn every year by 2035.

Without the US, developed countries are likely to find targets on climate finance harder to meet. They may seek to reduce the component of publicly sourced money – from overseas aid budgets, and through institutions such as the World Bank – making up the climate finance goal.

That could mean an increased role for the private sector in making up the $1tn target. But that is controversial. Private sector cash comes with strings attached and can drive countries further into debt. It is also harder to access for the poorest countries that need it most, particularly in order to help them cope with the impacts of extreme weather, an activity that few private sector companies have been prepared to fund to date.

In a statement that some parties will find controversial, Babayev wrote: “With competing priorities, there simply isn’t enough money in the world to fund developing countries’ transition to clean energy solely through grants or concessional financing – let alone cover adaptation and loss and damage.”

Many civil society groups are wary of an expanded role for the private sector. Mariana Paoli, the global advocacy lead at Christian Aid, said: “Government finance is so much better than private finance when it comes to tackling climate change. Governments are the only ones able to provide finance in the form of grants, which are the only way to address the growing needs of developing countries to address the climate crisis. Private finance is guided by profits and is almost always loans, therefore worsening the debt crisis that many developing countries are facing.”

She argued that it should not be counted towards the sums developing countries are demanding, known as the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) in UN jargon. “Private companies are not accountable to the Paris agreement. Any climate change-related investment they make is welcome but it’s separate from what should be discussed at the talks in Baku,” she said.

However, many developing countries accept that private finance must play a role. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Small Island States said: “At the core of the NCQG is developed countries fulfilling their commitments under the Paris agreement. A key focus is the provision of public finance from developed to developing countries. An additional pillar is the mobilisation of substantive private financing, by specific public interventions of developed countries. The onus must be on the public efforts to advance enhanced finance.”

Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, told the opening session of the conference on Monday that inflation would result from a continued reliance on fossil fuels and that tackling the climate crisis would also help to tackle economic problems.

“If at least two-thirds of the world’s nations cannot afford to cut emissions quickly, then every nation pays a brutal price. If nations can’t build resilience into supply chains, the entire global economy will be brought to its knees. No country is immune,” he said.

In a veiled but pointed reference to the new presidency in the US, he warned that all countries must play a role. “Let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity. An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest,” he said.