Will China step up if Trump backs down on climate change?published at 10:01 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time

10:01 GMT

Justin Rowlatt
Climate editor in Baku

The WhatsApp message came from the chief negotiator of one of the most powerful countries at the COP climate meeting. Can I come by for a chat, he asked.

As his team hunched over computers and ate takeout pizza, he raged at the obstructionist behavior of many of the other teams in the conference.

So far so normal. Others had been saying versions of this all week – that this was the worst COP ever; that negotiating texts, which are supposed to get smaller as the deadlines approached, were in fact balloons; that the COP in its current form may be dead in the water.

Over all was the prospect of US President-elect Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the COP process when he takes office for a second term.

He has called climate action a “sham” and at his victory celebration in West Palm Beach earlier this month, he pledged to increase US oil production beyond its current record levels, saying: “we have more liquid gold than any country in the world”.

image source, Getty Images

But there was one positive: China.

“That’s the only bright spot in all of this,” the chief negotiator told me. Not only was its negotiating style markedly different from previous years, but he also observed that, as he puts it, “China could take a step forward”.

Another sign that this may be the case came at the start of the conference, when China released details of its climate finance.

China has traditionally released minimal information about its climate policies and plans, so it came as a surprise when officials said for the first time that it has paid developing countries more than $24 billion for climate action since 2016.

“That’s serious money, almost nobody else is at that level,” a COP insider told me.