The US under Trump is going to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and probably no longer going to COPs. They are the biggest supporter of Israel and climate reparations are going to be a very hard sell, with the largest historic emitter not paying anything at all. Actually it is even worse as the US already is giving less then other historical emitters. So best case is that mainly Europe pays for the US share as well and stops its support for Israel.

Also the headline is deliberatly missleading. Gaza is obviously not a massive topic at a COP.

Cooperative banking begs to differ, that the problem is them being a bank.

Simple the US is out due to Trump being elected and Biden not being able to escalate in a meaningful way in the coming months.

Europe is trying to figure out what Trump plans to do about Ukraine and is probably setting something up to keep Ukraine capable of fighting.

Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. From Wikipedia:

In 2022, she stated that NATO and the Biden administration not taking the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO off the table may be one of the factors provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[291][292] She also argued against economic sanctions on Russia on the basis that Americans would suffer from higher oil and gas prices.[291] Gabbard stated that “the Washington power elite” is trying to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan.[293] In March 2022, she said media freedom in Russia is “not so different” from that in the United States. PolitiFact described her claim as false, noting that in Russia the government represses independent media and free speech, including imprisoning critics of the invasion of Ukraine.[294] In February 2024, Trump met with Gabbard, who has been an outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine, to discuss the future of US foreign policy in case of his re-election.[295]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard#Ukraine_and_Russia

The interest rates have massive impacts. 20% more business bancrupcies, 57% drop in new mortages for new construction and well the government has issues getting loans right now. The Russian government bond index is hitting all time lows.

In other words Russia is facing a massive housing crisis, while its economy collapses, they have high inflation, the government is running out of money and they are fighting a war.

Because Trump wants to end the war, but the US is not the country to make the call. Ukraine still has a strong military and arms industry itself and many European countries and the EU have the money and arms industry to keep Ukraine in the fight. In fact we saw that when the Republicans blocked aid to Ukraine for months. Today it is even worse for Russia as both Ukraines and the EUs arms industry have grown.

Russia on the other hand has been hit by sanctions for years, which make no mistake have hit the Russian economy hard. We are talking high inflation, problems finding money for the government, gas sales having collapsed, a somewhat likely housing crisis, defaults of lots of companies in Russia, coal industry collapsing, private bancrupcy rising fast and a lot more bad stuff. The Soviet era weapon stockpiles are running low and Russia has increasing problems finding new recruits.

Ukraine can keep the fight going for quite some time, without US help. That might be long enough to bring down Russia. The key word being might, as it depends on a lot of factors, most notably European support, but also the oil price and a lot of other factors.

Looking at this taking land has two main advantages for Putin. First of all it lowers European support for the war, as they might believe that Ukraine is going to loose, hence pushing for peace and secondly in a peace deal it gives him leverage.

The original press release:

https://globalcarbonbudget.org/fossil-fuel-co2-emissions-increase-again-in-2024/

Thanks that was very funny.

The point was more that there are not many strategic targets, which Taurus could hit inside Russia, which can not be hit by a cheaper Ukrainian made drone due to air defence. So if Germany would send thousands of them, it would still not make that much of a difference. The main value is that Russia has to move assets further back.

Russia trying to take as much land as it can, before Trump tries to force a peace deal. This is also to make the Europeans consider sending more aid.

Taurus would be used more or less like Storm Shadow against high value strategic targets. The big difference is that Germany would have to default to allow its use on targets inside Russia, since activly being part of the targeting might very well be unconstitutional. So what could be expected are a bunch of Russian jets, ammunition stockpiles and maybe the Kerch Bridge being blown up. Ukrainian drones are not stealthy, so they are much easier to intercept or to warn against. Hence something like Taurus can make a difference.

So it is usefull, but it is not going to change the war fundamentally.

Honestly Merz does a lot of shit, but he is for pro Ukranian action, which is relativly unpopular. The issue is more, that he has never been in government and a lot of his other ideas are horrible.

Also the CDU is in parts very pro Russia. Kretschmer comes to mind.

And this is how we can turn Florida blue.

When you take “Fuck Nazis” to literal.

When you adjust for trade it still would be China, USA and then EU in terms of total emissions. In terms of per capita the US leads, but by now I am not sure if China or the EU has higher emissions. Europe is obviously worse though, as Russia is a massive polluter.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions?tab=table&time=earliest..2021

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart&country=CHN~OWID_EU27

If they do not send more and that is the real issue.

In international relation rhetoric is policy. Just saying.

If no location is found, then it defaults to Germany hosting the COP.

Same reason BP promoted the carbon footprint. They want COP to look like proper climate action, so less people use their energy to do something better. COP looking like an oil sells event, is awful PR for them.

The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year. That is roughly in line with meeting the 1.5C target and mainly done using reasonable policy.

China also invests a lot in Green technology. With the trade war, it is certainly possible that the Chinese economy crashes, which would mean lower energy consumption growth and hence lower Chinese emissions.

There also is a strong chance that Trump launches a massive war in the Middle East. He loves Israel and bombing Arabs. If that includes attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, that could be great for the climate(although horrible on so many other levels).