The Oklahoma City police department is facing criticism following the release of body-camera footage that shows a police officer forcefully throwing an elderly man to the ground last month.
The city’s police department released body-camera footage last week from 27 October that shows a police officer violently arresting 71-year-old Lich Vu after pulling him over during a traffic stop. The officer has been identified as Joseph Gibson, according to USA Today.
Gibson pulled Vu over for an illegal U-turn on the NW 39th Expressway, according to police. In the initial minutes of the video, Vu, who is seated in his car with the door open and accompanied by his wife, can be seen communicating with Gibson amid an English language barrier.
“I didn’t U-turn,” he says.
Gibson then asks Vu to sign a citation for an improper U-turn, saying that it is not an admission of guilt but rather confirmation that Vu will take care of the ticket at a later date.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vu replies, adding that another driver hit his car. “Me? Citation? She hit me and I got the citation?” he says. Shortly after, Vu gets out of the car and gestures to the road in an attempt to further explain the situation to Gibson. Gibson then says they are “done arguing about this”.
Vu replies, “I want to show you,” to which Gibson says, “We argue in court … If you don’t sign this, you go to jail.”
“I’m ready to go to jail,” Vu says. Gibson then says, “You’re ready to go to jail? Ridiculous.” He proceeds to head over to the other driver involved in the incident and issues her a ticket before returning to Vu.
The two men continue arguing and at one point, Vu appears to tap Gibson’s chest with the back of his hand. Vu then brings his index finger up to his mouth and says, “You shut up.” Gibson then grabs Vu’s arm and twists it before pinning him on to the ground. Separate surveillance footage from nearby businesses shows Vu’s head forcefully hitting the ground as Gibson places handcuffs on him.
KFOR reports that Vu, who has bone cancer, suffered from a brain bleed and had to undergo surgery. He has remained in the hospital since the incident and is “in and out of consciousness, but stable”, according to family members who spoke to the outlet.
Following the incident, Thuan Nguyen, president of the Vietnamese American Community of Oklahoma, called for Gibson to be terminated.
“We don’t want our police department nor our [district attorney] to take it lightly. We want justice to be served,” Nguyen told NBC, adding, “We are always the last to be heard … so no matter whether we’re the person that is at fault or not at fault, our statements are always last … And so in certain cases, that indicates implicit bias.”
In a statement on Facebook, the Oklahoma City police department said that “an investigation was immediately initiated and the officer was placed on administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation”.
“The Oklahoma City police department is dedicated to transparency and accountability. We want our community to know that this case is being thoroughly investigated, and the review process will take time to complete,” it added.
Mia Mottley, the climate-championing prime minister of Barbados, has invited Donald Trump to a face-to-face meeting where she would seek “common ground” and persuade him that climate action was in his own interests.
“Let us find a common purpose in saving the planet and saving livelihoods,” she told the Guardian at the UN’s Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan. “We are human beings and we have the capacity to meet face-to-face, in spite of our differences. We want humanity to survive. And the evidence [of the climate crisis] we are seeing almost weekly now.”
Only by personal meetings among world leaders can the massive changes needed on climate action be achieved, she believes. “President Trump has been very clear about the importance of that kind of face-to-face conversation in the things that he believes that he can solve as well.”
Mottley, the prime minister who took Barbados out of the Commonwealth realm to be a republic, has been an electrifying presence at recent UN climate summits since she took to the stage at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 with an impassioned speech demanding world leaders “try harder” to avoid passing a death sentence on her country. Since then, she has gained a global reputation as a formidable champion of the developing countries most affected by climate breakdown.
She has also led a movement among developing and some developed countries to change the global financial system to generate the funds needed to shift the world to a low-carbon economy.
The re-election of Trump has thrown a deep shadow over Cop29, which kicked off on Monday in Baku. Scores of world leaders flew in for the summit, but the heads of government of most of the world’s biggest economies stayed away.
Delegates fear Trump will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, dismantle regulations and climate targets, and push forward with plans to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels. Scientists have warned that if he follows through on his campaign promises the world has little hope of limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures.
Argentinian negotiators representing the government of climate science denier Javier Milei were ordered on Wednesday to withdraw from Cop29 after just three days, adding to concerns about the stability of the Paris agreement.
But Trump had shown a willingness to deal with crises before, Mottley noted. “I think that there are possibilities for discussion. The same warp speed that President Trump addressed the issue of vaccines and the development of a vaccine is the same warp speed that we want to encourage him and others to look at for decarbonising technology,” she said.
She also believes she could show Trump that the US would benefit economically from tackling the climate crisis.
For instance, she pointed to the flaring of methane from oil and gas production sites. Installing relatively simple equipment to catch and use the methane instead would be profitable, according to the International Energy Agency, which should appeal to Trump.
“Why would you want to flare gas and lose money, when you can use gas and earn money?” she asked.
She also pointed to climate migration. “If I can’t live because I can’t farm because I don’t have access to water, or floods are now coming with an intensity and a regularity that makes it impossible for me to sustain my way of life, I’m going to shift where I’m living from.
“Or if I have no ability to access insurance, and insurance is critical to my ability to get a loan, I’m going to have to move from where I’m operating. So the volume of climate migration hopefully will wake up those who have been slow to see that this must be a win-win.”
Mottley argued Trump would also find it hard to fully reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, which incentivises clean energy, because many formerly depressed areas around the US, including traditionally Republican-voting ones, had seen new jobs and industries spring up because of it.
“We’ve had four years of municipalities, states and the private sector all making significant investments [in a low-carbon economy] in the US,” she said. “You are unlikely to see a U-turn on everything in as bald a way as some people fear.”
Cop29 is focused on the issue of climate finance, with the aim of setting out a new global goal that would deliver at least $1tn a year to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather.
Developed countries, however, are likely to pledge as little as a third of that in public finance from their overseas aid budgets and through the World Bank and similar institutions.
Mottley recognises rich countries will not stump up enough cash from their own budgets, though she argues they ought to do far more than they are now pledging. She has a set of proposals, known as the Bridgetown agenda after the capital of Barbados, that would generate more than $1tn a year in climate finance.
First off are reforms to the World Bank that would help free up hundreds of billions more in cash, and make loans cheaper and easier to access for the poorest and most vulnerable countries. Mottley says these moves are already under way, and have been successful so far.
She also wants new sources of revenue, called “global solidarity levies” – ways of raising money, particularly from polluting activities, that can go towards climate finance. These include a compulsory levy on business and first class flights, with a voluntary charge on economy flights that passengers could choose to pay (“because the agency of individuals matters”); a charge on international shipping; a charge on fossil fuel extraction that could reap $210bn a year; and a 0.1% levy on financial transactions that would raise $480bn a year.
“The reality is that global public goods need dedicated sources of global financing. And if we were to extend the polluter-pays principle, then those who contribute to the problem should help carry some of the burden. And those who make profit egregiously should also leave a little something on the table,” she said. “This is the one issue for sure that binds us all, because without a planet there will be no life that we can sustain.”
Mottley also favours a wealth tax on billionaires, which has been proposed by Brazil. “When you took the [Covid] vaccine injection, you didn’t even feel it. The super wealthy, if asked to leave a little something on the table, will not feel it.”
It is beyond the scope of Cop29, or the UN, to impose such levies, and they do not form part of the formal discussions in Azerbaijan. However, a special taskforce including Barbados, France, Spain, Kenya and others – but not, so far, the UK – is working to bring the proposals to reality.
One vitally important action that she hopes Cop29 will take is to focus on methane. Emissions of this gas – which comes from fossil fuel exploration, agriculture and waste, and is many times more powerful than CO2 in heating the planet – have been rising, but efforts to control them have so far had little impact.
“There needs to be a global methane agreement,” she said. Scientists have said that controlling methane could prevent 0.5C of heating in the short term. “It seems like it’s a no-brainer,” Mottley said.
A German energy firm has said that Donald Trump’s election victory has increased the risks of investing in offshore wind projects – but his return to the White House could help bolster Britain’s renewables sector, according to UK developer SSE.
Germany’s RWE has cut its spending plans and warned that, as a result of the US election, “the risks for offshore wind projects have increased”.
The company, which is behind a string of wind and solar projects, on Wednesday shaved €3bn from its spending plans for the next financial year to €7bn, down from €10bn in 2024. It will also delay its plans to invest €55bn in renewables before 2030.
Trump’s re-election last week sent a chill through the renewables sector, as investors dumped green energy stocks.
He has vowed to clamp down on Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which stands to inject about $433bn in grants, loans and tax incentives to healthcare, utilities and clean energy companies.
Separately, Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of Britain’s SSE, said a clean energy slowdown in the US could be “a real positive” for the UK even after Trump’s victory wiped billions from the market value of Europe’s largest renewable energy developers.
But Phillips-Davies told the Guardian that, while doubts surround the future of the US industry, the UK could seize the chance to secure a greater share of global supply chains and manufacturing opportunities.
“It’s not good news for US renewables but it could be helpful because it means the US will not be sucking up the global supply chain,” Phillips-Davies said.
Renewable developers have been forced to compete for supplies of products used for green projects in recent years as demand for new windfarms has taken off, raising concerns over project delays.
Siemens Energy, one of the world’s largest wind turbine makers, on Wednesday reported a net income of €1.3bn for its last financial year as it begins to emerge from a crisis in its wind turbine division which led to a historic loss of €4.6bn.
Phillips-Davies added that the UK could now get “ahead of the game” to secure its supply of materials and components and establish its own manufacturing capabilities. This would help the UK to deliver domestic projects at lower cost and increase exports to the rest of the world, he said.
It could prove to be “a real positive in terms of an industrial strategy story”, he added.
SSE, which is building the world’s biggest offshore windfarm in North Sea, was not directly affected by the sell-off in renewable shares as its focus is on the UK and Europe. It is planning to expand its portfolio into continental Europe.
Phillips-Davies used the company’s half-year financial results to announce his retirement as chief executive next year after 11 years in the role. SSE’s pre-tax profits climbed by 26.4% from last year’s half-year results to £714.5m, he said.
Michael Müller, the chief financial officer of RWE, which has multi-billion euro plans to develop windfarms in the US, said that its investment plans for the rest of the decade would “slip back” following the election result, and due to delays to Europe’s green hydrogen plans. “But we will have to wait and see how things develop in the future,” he added.
RWE reported earnings of €4bn in the first nine months of the year, down from €5.7bn in the same period in 2023 despite its growing renewable energy generation.
Its share price tumbled by more than 4% after the US election result, but its decision to take a more cautious approach to investment combined with a €1.5bn share buyback programme, helped its share price to climb back above pre-election levels on Wednesday.
Tancrede Fulop, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said: “The buy-back addresses investor demands from the substantial profits during the 2022-23 energy crisis, and management’s decision is supported by potential delays in US offshore wind projects and challenges in Europe’s hydrogen sector.”
It was my first pregnancy. I had been trying to have a child since I was 26. Ten years now. Some doctors had told me it would be impossible to have children because of an operation on my fallopian tubes in 2018. In fact, I had stopped trying. But, voilà ! The first month I thought I had my period, but it wasnât, and by the second month, my pants didnât fit anymore. So I went to the pharmacy to take a test. I couldnât believe it â I was pregnant! I also went to the hospital to confirm it. I was two months along.
At that moment, I stopped everything and started taking care of myself. Everything was going well. My mother always said she wanted seven grandchildren, but since she said I was already too old, we agreed on just four! I followed all the gynaecological and medical visits at the Yalgado hospital. Up until six months, everything was fine. I had no problems, I could sleep, and I wasnât in pain.
A donkey shelters from the heat of the sun under a tree in the village of Nedogo, near Ouagadougou. Photograph: Luc Gnago/Reuters
Then the heat came. At night, Iâd wake up to get some air because I was so hot. Iâd also take showers during the night. Iâd wake up two or three times each night. When I woke up, I was exhausted, as if I hadnât slept at all. Since it was my first pregnancy, I wasnât sure if this was normal or not, so I assumed it was, even though I couldnât sleep well due to the heat.
You feel suffocated at night, you canât breathe well because on top of the heat, this year there was so much humidity. I even thought I had breathing problems, but doctors told me no, it was just the heat.
I was scared, because the doctors told me to stay in a cool place, but they didnât understand my reality. What if there were power cuts? I had to wet a towel and lay it on my bed to lie down, and when it got warm, Iâd go wet it again. So, I wasnât sleeping well. I thought maybe the heat was because of the pregnancy, but the heat was real; it wasnât just because I was pregnant.
During the day, it was infernal. My daily activities had to be done from 8-9am at the latest, or at night when the sun was down. But in the sun, it was unbearableâ heavy, humid, and with my sinus issues, I couldnât breathe. When it was heavy and dusty, I preferred to stay home.
Mariama was told by doctors to stay in a cool place, but it was hard to follow the advice during the heatwave. Photograph: Supplied
It hurt a lot. My chest was swollen, and my back hurt. The heat made my back pain even worse, so it wasnât good for me. I was always looking for a cool spot. Iâd take showers, but it was so hot that when you came out, you felt even hotter because your fan was blowing hot air. The best thing was to aim the fan towards a corner to cool the air a bit. But it really wasnât good; I felt nauseous, dizzy ⦠mainly dizzy from the heat. Thatâs what was happening to me.
Weâre in the Sahel, so weâre used to heat, but this year, people werenât used to it anymore. Iâve never seen so many people sleeping outside or sitting by their doors. Before, there were power cuts, but never like this. It used to happen during the day; now itâs at night, too. In your neighbourhood, you feel safe because so many people are outside. Everyoneâs out, everyoneâs hot, nobody wants to go inside. They wait for the power to come back or to get so exhausted that they would finally go to sleep. Otherwise, it was impossible. Really.
About six months along, when I was at the market one day, I felt dizzy; I was so hot. I was walking, and at some point, I stopped because I felt a liquid running down my leg, and I thought, âSomethingâs wrong.â The next couple of days were a blur of pain and worry. I saw one doctor who told me that it wasnât serious, and weâd see what was going on. I waited five hours to see him. He told me to get ultrasounds done. I had the first one, then a second, and they told me things were OK, that I had lost a little fluid, but there were natural ways to recover it.
I was sent to another hospital where they told me not to go home, that someone needed to see me. So I stayed there waiting in the car, lying down in the back. You canât open the windows because of mosquitoes, so you have to sleep with the air conditioning, which uses up your fuel.
Finally, the next morning, they told me to go to another hospital. By the time I got there and someone saw me, the pain was so bad. They got me to lie down in a room. The pain was so bad that the doctor came, took my temperature, then brought a syringe with something in it. I asked, âWhatâs this for?â After the injection, I said, âIâm in even more pain, itâs contracting.â They didnât say anything. Forty minutes later, the doctor came back and asked if I was still having contractions. I said yes, that it hurt. He explained that the drug they gave me was to help deliver the baby. I asked if my baby would survive and he said no.
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In those two days of being passed around, nobody could explain to me what was going on. When they induced labour, I didnât even know who I was. I had the impression that nobody saw me. I couldnât even ask questions; my mouth wouldnât react. They had just induced labour without me realising it ⦠I didnât know what to think. I felt defeated. I asked myself, âWhat did I do? Why is nobody looking at me?â I thought, âWhy didnât anyone tell me I was going to lose my baby?â And there they were, sitting there, doing nothing. No explanation, no details, nothing.
It was like a slap in the face, a shock. I felt defeated. You go to the hospital to die. The heat, the power cuts, thereâs no equipment. The heat â nobody even wants to talk about it. Itâs the first thing everyone will tell you. It was extremely hot. And then, there are the specialists. When you go into their office, itâs so cold you start shaking, and when you step back into the hallway, you feel like fainting.
In the room where I had to push and push, there were no mosquito nets. We were six or seven in one room. Here, you learn not to be ashamed. You scream, you push, you scream, you push, you scream, you push. My husband was outside, panicking as he heard my screams without knowing what was happening. Itâs a plastic mattress. Either you bring your own sheet, or you give birth where so many women have already done so. When someone has to push, they send out the womenâs companions, but we women face each other; the ones in front of you see everything.
A man pushes a trolley in Burkina Fasosâs capital, Ouagadougou. Photograph: Olympia de Maismont/AFP/Getty Images
There was no air conditioning, and the fans are on either side of the room. The first person who arrives takes the bed under the fan, and others take the second fan. All the others, we get nothing. There are six beds here and six across. Itâs packed, and youâre pressed up against other women. Itâs so hot. It was unbearable there because of the heat. Everyone was looking for air. When I was screaming, it was my mother who fanned me. But I didnât even want anyone to touch me anymore. When anyone touched me, Iâd scream. I didnât want anything. Itâs true that itâs over now, but I canât go three nights without thinking about it. It still lingers within me.
It was after six hours of contractions that the baby came out. The nurse asked if I wanted to throw it in the trash or bury it, I swear you. I took the baby home, wrapped in the cloth I had bought for its birth, and we buried it at the fatherâs house.
How did you start living again? No one pushed me. Afterward, I heard other similar stories. Here, they often link pregnancy problems to something the woman has done or eaten, but I know that it was the effect of the heat and the stress, with 40 to 41 degrees (celsius) of heat, going back and forth between hospitals. This year, the heat was something very unusual. I didnât know if it was climate change or what, but we experienced a strange kind of heat. Throughout the entire ordeal, I was asking God to help me. Only Him. I felt like I was going crazy. I felt better talking to a deity than to a human being. Most people tend to judge before understanding whatâs happening.
A few weeks afterwards, we planted a guava tree. It was important to have a place to go, to gather oneself and be at peace. I threw myself completely into my activities; I looked for work. Working is a way to release it. But every time I watch a movie and see a woman who just gave birth, that feeling returns, and I feel awful: âImagine, I could have too.â
You canât say it was a fluke. If in 2016, Donald Trumpâs novelty, combined with his loss of the popular vote, allowed liberals to retain a bit of plausible deniability about what his presidential win meant about America, this time, there is no such comfort. Donald Trump is no longer a mystery or an amusing diversion: no one can claim that they do not understand full extent of his malignant corruption, or the seriousness of his movementâs hostility to pluralist democracy. And he won the popular vote.
Many postmortems of last weekâs election have tried to preserve the notion that Trumpâs voterâs did not endorse him and his vision â that they know not what they do. This is dishonest, and a bit patronizing toward Trumpâs supporters. Trumpâs voters, for the most part, know exactly what he is, and what voting for him means. They are not ignorant or mistaken about him. They endorse him and what he is.
A large part of what a majority of Americans voted for last week was the Trump campaignâs virulent misogyny. Trump himself, an adjudicated rapist who has bragged about both committing sexual assault and engineering the reversal of Roe v Wade, speaks of women in vulgar, degrading terms. He picked a running mate who has denigrated childless women as âpsychoticâ âcat ladiesâ. His adviser and funder Elon Musk, who seems to have designs on becoming something of a shadow president in Trumpâs second term, is a techno-fascist pro-natalist who goes around offering women insemination.
The Trump campaign positioned itself as a champion of a hierarchical gender order, aiming to restore men to a place of wrongfully deprived supremacy over women. Many of his voters cast their lot in with Trump hoping that he would do just that.
Now, in the wake of Trumpâs victory, some of his supporters have adopted a slogan which neatly joins the movementâs twin projects of forced sex and forced pregnancy: âYour body, my choice.â
âYour body, my choice,â was coined by the far-right, pro-Nazi internet troll and Trump dinner guest Nick Fuentes on the night of the election. âYour body, my choice,â Fuentes tweeted. âForever.â Itâs a taunting inversion of the pro-choice slogan âmy body, my choiceâ, meant to assert womenâs autonomy: instead, âyour body, my choiceâ presents womenâs full citizenship and freedom as laughable, asserting, in gleeful terms, the male supremacy that will now carry for the force of policy and law under a new Trump administration.
In response to Fuentesâs post, pro-Trump men have adopted the slogan en masse to troll women online. An analysis from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that the use of the phrase soared on social media in the days following the election, along with similar misogynist phrases like âget back in the kitchenâ, and the use of sexist slurs directed at liberal and progressive women like Kamala Harris and Rachel Maddow. Female TikTok users reported a flood of such comments, with âyour body, my choiceâ chief among them on the platform. And young girls in schools, along with their teachers and parents, reported incidents of the phrase being yelled out by boys in taunting jeers of harassment and intimidation in the days following the election.
âYour body, my choiceâ is a rejection of womenâs rights to control their own bodies in more ways than one. In addition to the phraseâs sneering inversion of a pro-choice phrase, rejecting the abortion right and claiming the overturn of Roe as a victory for men, the phrase has a second, dual meaning: as a rape threat. The men and boys who use it are not merely taunting women with the threat of an unwanted, forced pregnancy. They are taunting them with the threat of forced sex.
It is not always a connection that the misogynist right has made so explicit. In other eras, the anti-choice movement has adopted an overtly religious attitude of sexual repression, aiming to restrict abortion as a means of restricting sexuality across the board. But this preacherly, sexually repressed masculinity is not the masculinity of todayâs misogynist rightwing movement. Rather, the Maga right is one that sees sex not as something that must be rendered shameful and pushed out of the public sphere, but as a weapon that can be used to punish, humiliate and dominate women.
This new, avowedly and vulgarly sexual rightwing masculinity is what Fuentes was crystalizing in his snide little coinage of âyour body, my choiceâ: it is one that aims to use physical and sexual force to coerce women into a degraded gendered role, one subject to menâs domination and only partial, limited and conditional in its citizenship and access to the public sphere. In this sense, their projects in joyfully celebrating rape and restricting womenâs access to abortion are two sides of the same coin: the right seeks to dominate women and to commandeer the inside of their bodies so as to force them into a gendered role against their will, be that role as sex object or as mother.
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This is why it is fitting that Trump, who was found liable for the rape of one woman and accused of sexual assault by two dozen others, was the president to secure the overturning of Roe v Wade; it is why it is fitting that two of the justices who voted to overturn Roe, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct, each by more than one woman. It is because the sex politics of the right is not an anti-sex, puritanical politics. It is a politics of sexual domination.
There is no use pretending that this is not what the Trump movement is. And there is no use in pretending that this is not what many of the men who voted for Trump hoped to achieve when they supported him. Much of the pre-election coverage of the gender dynamics of Trumpâs campaign has disappeared in the days following the election, and perhaps this unpleasant reality is why: most Americans voted for a man they have every reason to believe is a rapist. For some of them, at least, that was not a liability, but an asset.
I am resisting the temptation to write a lamentation of anger and sorrow about Trumpâs second victory. What is more useful is to think about what Europe can do to protect its environment, its people and its economy in a world where the Trump administration may act, in many ways, to undermine and even destroy it.
The EUâs first bold move to lead by example in the new Trump era should be to seize 200bn eurosâ worth of frozen Russian central bank assets and transfer them to Ukraine as a form of pre-emptive reparations. The European Parliamentary Research Service and outside experts have proposed ways in which it could be done in full accordance with international law. But this alone wonât obviate the need for the EU to borrow more to boost its common defence and green infrastructure spending, even though it will increase its debt.
Part of the money raised should be earmarked for the European Space Agency to develop a crewed vehicle that can guarantee European astronauts independent access to orbit and beyond without having to turn to Elon Musk and SpaceX (or other US-based companies). Other spending might be used to boost research in ways that help Europeâs economy rebound and stay competitive.
But the real step the EU can take towards protecting its economy (and with it, its citizensâ wellbeing, optimism and faith in democracy) involves things that are less sexy than building a spaceship, such as finishing the capital markets union that could enable more European tech start-ups to borrow money. The EU has spent the better part of a decade wringing its hands over the absence of European substantial tech companies compared with the US and China. A big reason for this is that itâs simply easier to raise funds in the US because private and public pension funds allocate a greater part of their investments towards venture capital than European pension funds do.
As the former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta said on French radio recently, each year European savers send about â¬300bn to US stock markets, primarily because thatâs where their banks focus their activities. This money helps boosts the valuation of US companies, which can result in them being able to finance buying out European firms.
Europe already exports tech-startup founders to the US rather than keeping them at home â which, according to a US-based French investor â has resulted in French tech in the US being worth far more than French tech in France. For instance, Snowcloud and Datadog, both founded by French entrepreneurs in the US, are many times more valuable than Franceâs largest unicorns or biggest recent stock market flotation. A situation where the continent is exporting founders, their startups, and the capital that is funding them makes absolutely no sense.
This matters because, as Stanford academic and author Mariejte Schaake argues in the FT, we need European tech to embodydemocratic values. On that front, the EU should feel vindicated that its attempt to regulate disinformation on social media is the correct strategy. Democracy is untenable when voters are subjected to algorithms weaponised to constrict their worldview and flood them with disinformation. In Muskâs hands, X is an extraordinarily dangerous tool for election engineering. Europe was already on the verge of fining X 6% of its global revenue (and potentially including Tesla and SpaceX in its calculation). Musk, who spent at least $130m to help elect Trump, is already seeing the return on his investment, with vice president-elect JD Vance suggesting the US might withdraw from Nato if the EU takes action against him.Whether through enforcement, some new type of regulatory agency or a future ban on X, this is not a fight the EU can back away from because the existence of European democracy itself is at stake.
The EU can also do something unexpected. Trump has made no secret of his desire for vengeance and retribution against his enemies: tens of thousands of civil servants ; universities, professors and students. He has fantasised and encouraged violence against journalists, protesters, judges, immigrants and political opponents, and has promised to set the justice department and even the military on them. It bears repeating: a second Trump administration will not have the guardrails of the first, where Mike Milley and Mike Esper ignored orders to âjust shootâ antiracism protesters.
American dissidents abroad might one day be targeted as well. The EU should announce a principle of non-compliance with any US attempt to extradite or harass US citizens being targeted for political reasons or for civil disobedience â such as engaging in tax resistance against a Trump administration, as some Americans did in small numbers during his first time in office and which has its roots in opposition to the Vietnam war.
Finally, Europe has an opportunity to invert the transatlantic brain drain. This time really is different and Americans know it: searches for âmove to Europe,â or for individual European countries are on a totally different scale than ever before. There is a unique chance for Europe to roll out a red carpet of special visas and ease the path for highly educated Americans who want to flee Trumpmerica (like climate scientists sure to have their funding slashed). Or perhaps to partner with US universities that might eventually seek to establish satellite campuses for students and staff who can no longer be located in the US.
Underlying all Europeâs failures to solve its collective action problems is the same phenomenon â sometimes it thinks and acts like a continent but too often actually behaves like a group of small, fragmented nations. In 2003, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that Europe might surpass this tendency by constructing European identity in opposition to the US. Two decades later, he may inadvertently get his wish.
Albanian PM questions point of summit ‘if biggest polluters continue as usual’
Ajit Niranjan
Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, has gone off-script – he said he left behind his âwell-prepared speechâ after watching yesterdayâs leaders make their statements on silent screens above comfortable couches in an adjoining room at the Cop29 venue in Baku yesterday.
âPeople there eat, drink, meet and take photos together – while images of voiceless leaders play on and on and on in the background,â he said. âTo me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world every day. Life goes on, with its old habits, and our speeches – full of good words about fighting climate change – change nothing.â
He pointed to the UN Secretary-Generalâs statement yesterday highlighting that carbon emissions increased between the last Cop and this one, a finding that my colleague Damian Carrington has broken down here.
âWhat does it mean for the future of the world if the biggest polluters continue as usual?â asked Rama. âWhat on earth are we doing in this gathering, over and over and over, if there is no common political will on the horizon to go beyond words and unite for meaningful action?â
COP29 climate summit in Baku Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, speaks during the COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan November 13, 2024. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters
Key events
Ajit Niranjan
Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, has joined a chorus of leaders using their speeches to call for more money to reach their climate goals – and specifying that they need grants rather than loans that saddle them with more debt.
âWithout climate justice, there can be no real resilience,â he said. âI wouldnât want other countries to face the fight Pakistan faced in 2022.â
Pakistan was devastated by floods two years ago, shortly before Cop27. The disaster added a sense of urgency to that yearâs negotiations that helped pressure rich countries to set up a fund to pay for the losses and damages borne by poor countries. (You can read more on that from my colleague Nina Lakhani here.)
âTwo years, I warned at the top of my voice that the future would never forgive our inaction,â said Sharif. âToday, I echo the same warning with greater urgency and fullest energy at my command.â
Dharna Noor
25 countries have announced a commitment to swift and ambitious climate action.
âToo much is at stake for anything other than a race to the top,â said Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands at a Wednesday press conference.
The statement from the âhigh ambition coalition,â formed in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord negotiations, called for Cop29 negotiators to increase their climate finance commitments, promote accessibility to aid, and push for the transformation of international financial institutions to promote climate and development goals.
âAddressing debt and the high cost of capital is also key,â Heine said
The diverse list of signatories, including the Marshall Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Germany, Spain, and Chile, additionally called for mitigation pledges in line with a 1.5 degree rise in temperature and increased efforts to adapt to the climate crisis. The rights of women and girls are also essential, the statement said.
On Tuesday, multilateral development banks issued a joint agreement to boost financial support for climate aid â a âcrucialâ step, said Chileâs Minister for the Environment Maisa Rojas.
âWe really needed that so that that [climate] ambition really translates into action,â she said.
In the US â which joined the high ambition coalition in 2021 â Donald Trump has pledged to pull the country from the Paris Agreement when he takes office next year. This will be a âregressive stepâ from the worldâs largest historical emitter, said Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda.
The United States has an obligation, a moral obligation, perhaps more so than any other, to provide leadership and climate funding,â he said.
But Trumpâs re-election will not derail climate progress, said Heine.
âI think already policies are already in place to move this work forward,â she said.
The by the Marshall Islands in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord negotiations, the âhigh ambition coalitionâ aims to push the world to make swifter cuts on greenhouse gas emissions.
Albanian PM questions point of summit ‘if biggest polluters continue as usual’
Ajit Niranjan
Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, has gone off-script – he said he left behind his âwell-prepared speechâ after watching yesterdayâs leaders make their statements on silent screens above comfortable couches in an adjoining room at the Cop29 venue in Baku yesterday.
âPeople there eat, drink, meet and take photos together – while images of voiceless leaders play on and on and on in the background,â he said. âTo me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world every day. Life goes on, with its old habits, and our speeches – full of good words about fighting climate change – change nothing.â
He pointed to the UN Secretary-Generalâs statement yesterday highlighting that carbon emissions increased between the last Cop and this one, a finding that my colleague Damian Carrington has broken down here.
âWhat does it mean for the future of the world if the biggest polluters continue as usual?â asked Rama. âWhat on earth are we doing in this gathering, over and over and over, if there is no common political will on the horizon to go beyond words and unite for meaningful action?â
COP29 climate summit in Baku Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, speaks during the COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan November 13, 2024. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters
Ajit Niranjan
Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh, has hit out at âlimitless consumptionâ and called out for a new culture without waste, fossil fuels or personal profit.
âOur civilisation is at a great risk as we continue to promote self-destructive values,â said Yunus, an economist and Nobel laureate. âWe have chosen a lifestyle that works against the environment. We justify this with an economic framework that is considered as natural as the planetary system.â
Yunus became the caretaker head of Bangladeshâs interim government in August, after the nationâs longtime prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled abroad in the face of violent unrest against her rule.
Yunus called for a counter culture based on different values, but said the lifestyle would be chosen by young people, rather than imposed on them.
âIt can be done,â said Yunus. âAll we need to do is accept a new lifestyle consistent with the safety of the planet and all who live on it.â
Damian Carrington
Justice was the theme in a strong speech from Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, whose islands bear the brunt of the climate-supercharged hurricanes.
âFor nations like mine, [climate change] is no longer a warning, but a daily, devastating reality. We canât wait any longer for empty pledges.â He says rich nations must deliver the trillion dollar finance deal that is the key issue at Cop29.
âTo those who bear the greatest responsibility, I say this: the time for moral responsibility is now – justice demands promises are enforced.â He calls for grants, not loans, which could worsen debt levels.
Browne also says his nation supports Vanuatuâs initiative at the International Court of Justice calling for an opinion on the legal obligations all states have in relation to climate change. âIf voluntary promises remain broken, international law will be our path to justice.â
Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy, is now speaking at the leadersâ event, reports my colleague Damian Carrington, having âarrived late and a little out of breath.â
Meloni points out that the world population will be 8.5bn by 2030 and global GDP much higher, all bringing more demand for energy. As well as renewables, she says âgas, biofuels, hydrogen and carbon capture and storageâ all have a role, though scientists are clear all fossil fuels must be phased out.
She also cites nuclear fusion as a potential âgamechangerâ, though the joke that fusion is always 40 years away is not showing much sign of getting old. Large scale power from nuclear fusion is very unlikely to arrive in time to stop the global heating aleady wrecking communities around the world.
After a largely technical speech, Meloni finishes on a personal note: âIâm a mother, and as a mother, nothing gives me more satisfaction that when I work for policies that will enable my daughter and her generation to live in a better world.â
Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni adjusts the mic as she speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP
My colleague Damian Carrington has more from todayâs leadersâ summit at Cop29 â and news that one of the few G7 world leaders to attend has missed their speaking slot.
Italyâs prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has missed her slot at the leaders summit part of Cop29. Meloni and the UKâs Keir Starmer are the only G7 leaders to attend.
Meanwhile, the Crown Prince of Kuwait, Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, pledges to cut his nationâs carbon emissions by 80% by 2040, which sounds very impressive but is very unlikely to include the stateâs substantial oil and gas production.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, representing the Vatican, focuses on the trillion dollar finance for developing countries that is the key issue in Baku. He says these countries must not be put into further debt with loans for climate action: âEcological debt and environmental debt are two sides of the same coin.â
Petr Fiala, Prime Minister of Czechia basically makes a sales pitch for his nationâs nuclear power industry. âI strongly believe nuclear power is needed to meet sustainability goals.â He says Czechia has 50 years of experience and is âready to assist any countries which wishes to use it in the futureâ. Nuclear power is âclean and very safeâ, he says. Critics say it is far more expensive than renewable energy and much slower to build.
Damian Carrington
The first national leader to speak at Cop29 on Wednesday was Shina Ansari Hamedani, Vice President of Iran, and her speech was a heady mix of climate policy and geopolitics. Her key point was that the âillegal and unilateralâ international sanctions against Iran prevent it accessing the finance to build a green economy. In this she included nuclear power, the development of which is a key reason for the sanctions.
She also called the sanctions âunjustified and irrationalâ, before also condemning the war in Gaza calling Israel the âoccupying Zionist regimeâ. Her final point struck a milder note as she appealed for global action: âOur shared environment is a common bond.â
Iran is both heavily dependent on oil for revenue and very vulnerable to climate impacts, including droughts and deadly humid heatwaves.
Iran Vice President Shina Ansari speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP
As we are waiting for things to get going in Baku today this is a useful refresher on all things Cop from my colleague Fiona Harvey
Damian Carrington
Itâs day three of Cop29 here in Baku and more global leaders will take to the stage, including Italyâs Giorgia Meloni and Pakistanâs Shehbaz Sharif. The aim is to spur negotiators towards a strong deal by setting out the stark impacts of the climate crisis and the âterrible truthâ brought by Spainâs Pedro Sánchez and by Mohamed Muizzu from the Maldives did just that.
The president of host nation Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took a different tack and said his nationâs oil and gas was a âgift from Godâ.
But all countries are today facing a disastrous report card on climate action in the publication of this yearâs Global Carbon Budget report. This finds that emissions from fossil fuels, the overwhelming cause of global heating, will rise in 2024 to another record high.
That is a stark contrast to the agreement at the last summit, Cop28, to âtransition away from fossil fuelsâ, which was hailed as a landmark for the simple but astonishing reason that no previous summit agreement had mentioned fossil fuels. It is also a stark contrast to the reality that emissions must plunge by 43% by 2030 to have any chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C and limiting the climate carnage.
âThe impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,â says Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, at the University of Exeter, who led the report.
So the negotiators have their work cut out to ensure that the next round of national climate commitments, due by February, deliver a step change. Tuesday did see a positive moment when the UK announced a strong commitment, pledging to cut emissions by 81% by 2035, a move that was widely welcomed in Baku.
Wednesday will also see events backed by the Cop29 presidency on advancing the effort to triple nuclear energy and address the challenges for small island developing states, who face literal extinction from the rising seas.
Record numbers of business representatives and lobbyists had access to the UN’s latest biodiversity talks, analysis shows.
In total 1,261 business and industry delegates registered for Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which ended in disarray and without significant progress on a number of key issues including nature funding, monitoring biodiversity loss and work on reducing environmentally harmful business subsidies.
The number is more than double the 613 present at the UN’s previous biodiversity conference in 2022.
Overall, the number of attendees increased by 46%, making Cop16 the largest UN nature conference yet, although business and industry increased disproportionately. Industry groups working in pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, agrochemicals, food and beverage processing and tech all had more people registered to attend, according to the analysis by DeSmog.
Some question the influence that these companies might have had on the outcomes of the summit negotiations.
Sectors with the greatest increases included food and beverage processing (up 460%) and tech (up 333%). The presence of agrochemical, pesticide and seed companies increased by 40% and 24% respectively since Cop15. “We certainly saw a stronger lobbying push for policies that favour agricultural productivity, and that clashed with the conservation goals and the position of civil society,” said Oscar Soria, director of the Common Initiative thinktank.
There was also a 25% increase in biotech representatives, who Soria said were “aggressive in pushing back on progress related to digital sequencing information (DSI)”. This was the voluntary agreement to make companies share profits from commercial discoveries derived from nature’s genetics. “Seems all of a sudden the private and business sector woke up and now they’re trying to defend their interests,” he said.
Kirsty Bryant, William Lockhart and Lactitia Tshitwamulomoni chair a session on Digital Sequence Information, an area of negotiation that saw a 25% increase in lobbyists. Photograph: Mike Muzurakis/ENB/IISD
Agrochemical and biotech industry trade group CropLife International sent 17 representatives. There were 10 representatives from Nestlé, and nine from ExxonMobil. This is more than some country delegations, including Belize which had seven delegates, Jamaica with six and the Bahamas with two.
Some groups appeared to have close state-industry relations, with more than a dozen business representatives registered with country delegations, rather than separate business delegations. These included CropLife, which had three members as part of Canada and Brazil’s country delegations. Three representatives from chemical manufacturing company Basf were registered with Mexico and Brazil, while one industry representative from crop company Syngenta entered with Switzerland. Eight representatives of Biotechnology Industry Association of Brazil, a biotech industry lobby group, attended with Brazil’s government delegation.
Country parties determine their own delegations and who is going to represent them, and it is not controlled by the UN, which holds the convention on biological diversity (CBD).
The number of sector-specific business and industry attendees are likely to be underestimates: DeSmog’s analysis counted a delegate as an industry representative if they were part of a top 10-20 market share company in a sector that used nature as a resource, or if they were brought in by a delegation representing the interests of these companies.
Rob Cooke, who is a member of the British Ecological Society and attended Cop16 as part of a team from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology,said he felt torn about the size of industry presence. “On the one hand, I optimistically see it as sign that nature is being taken seriously in terms of business and finance. We need these actors to be involved in discussions if we are to mainstream biodiversity across all sectors, and we need more money for biodiversity,” he said.
“On the other hand, the pessimist in me worries that industry representatives may use their influence to water down regulations or delay the necessary actions to halt biodiversity loss. Could their presence have contributed to the stalling and breakdown of implementation negotiations? It’s hard to tell, as these conversations likely happened behind closed doors.”
The UN says it is important to bring private interests to the negotiating table. “This is the greatest representation of business at a CBD Cop,” said David Ainsworth, head of communications for the UN’s CBD. “The increased presence of any groups to our meeting demonstrates the growing awareness of the importance of the biodiversity agenda. For business, it seems to me that it reflects the recognition that this area is becoming of interest for business.”
There is âno signâ of the transition away from burning fossil fuels that was pledged by the worldâs nations a year ago, with 2024 on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions.
The new data, released at the UNâs Cop29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, indicates that the planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature target and limiting âincreasingly dramaticâ climate impacts on people around the globe.
The worldâs nations agreed at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 to âtransition awayâ from fossil fuels, a decision hailed as a landmark given that none of the previous 27 summits had called for restrictions on the primary cause of global heating. On Monday, the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, told the summit in Baku: âHistory will judge us by our actions, not by our words.â
The rate of increase of carbon emissions has slowed over the last decade or so, as the rollout of renewable energy and electric vehicles has accelerated. But after a year when global heating has fuelled deadly heatwaves, floods and storms, the pressure is on the negotiators meeting in Baku to finally reach the peak of fossil fuel burning and start a rapid decline.
Cop29 will focus on mobilising the trillion dollars a year needed for developing nations to curb their emissions as they improve the lives of their citizens and to protect them against the now inevitable climate chaos to come. The summit also aims to increase the ambition of the next round of countriesâ emission-cutting pledges, due in February.
The new data comes from the Global Carbon Budget project, a collaboration of more than 100 experts led by Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, at the University of Exeter, UK. âThe impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked. Time is running out and world leaders meeting at Cop29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions.â
The calculation of 2024 emissions is based on the data available up to October and estimates for the final months of the year, which have been accurate in the past. More than 37bn tonnes will be emitted in 2024, about 4m tonnes a minute.
Gas emissions show the biggest annual increase, 2.4%, thanks to increased use in China and elsewhere. Oil burning increased by 0.9%, driven in particular by international flights, while coal emissions are expected to rise marginally by 0.2%.
The emissions of China, the worldâs biggest polluter, are expected to rise slightly. âIt has had another record year of growth in renewable power, but coal power also kept growing due to even faster growth in electricity demand from hi-tech industries and residential consumption,â said Jan Ivar Korsbakken, at Center for International Climate Research (Cicero) in Norway. Emissions from oil in China have probably peaked owing to the boom in electric vehicles.
Emissions from the second biggest polluter, the US, are expected to decline slightly, with coal continuing its decline to its lowest level in 120 years, but offset by an increase in gas burning. Coal emissions are falling even faster in the European Union, driving a 3.8% drop in emissions. However, coal burning is increasing in India as its economy grows strongly, leading to a 4.6% rise.
Land-use change emissions chart
The Global Carbon Budget also calculates the emissions from the destruction of forests, some of which are compensated for by the regrowth of trees elsewhere. These emissions have declined by about 20% over the last decade. However, they rose in 2024 because of the drying effect of El Niño, which increased droughts and wildfires in key regions.
Most of the emissions from deforestation comes from Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. âMuch of these emissions result from the export of goods to the global north, for example soya beans from South America going to China and to Europe,â said Prof Julia Pongratz, at the University of Munich, Germany.
Overall, the combined emissions from both fossil fuels and deforestation will reach another record high in 2024. âThere is a feeling that a peak in global fossil CO2 emissions is imminent, but it remains elusive,â said Dr Glen Peters, also at the Center for International Climate Research. âThe world continually finds ways to burn ever more fossil fuels.â
Romain Ioualalen, at Oil Change International, said: âAt Cop28, all countries pledged to transition away from fossil fuels but, on the ground, we have witnessed the opposite: new oil and gas projects are being approved around the world, in complete defiance of climate science.â
âAt Cop29, we need to see countries come to the table with [commitments] that end fossil fuel expansion and accelerate renewable energy,â he said. The host of Cop29, Azerbaijan, is planning a major expansion in gas production in the next decade.
Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday.
Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.
Trump said the duo “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
It is not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.
Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.
Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu and the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk promotes. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.
Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Ramaswamy, meanwhile, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican party nomination last year. After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Trump. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet.
He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm Buzzfeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.
Musk, speaking to reporters last month, stated a goal of reducing government spending by $2tn. Practically speaking, experts say those cost cuts could result in deregulation and policy changes that would directly impact Musk’s universe of companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.
Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.
“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter.”