lobbying

Rachel Reeves softened non-dom plans after Blackstone CEO ‘raised concerns’

Spread the love

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

The Chancellor held meetings with a number of finance bosses in the weeks following the budget, including Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman 
| UK government / Treasury

Revealed: Head of world’s biggest asset manager lobbied chancellor on tax rules weeks before policy was tweaked

Rachel Reeves changed the government’s position on non-doms weeks after one of the world’s most powerful financiers asked her personally not to increase the tax burden on the super rich.

Documents released to openDemocracy under the Freedom of Information Act reveal Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of leading asset manager Blackstone, raised “concerns” with Reeves about her plans to reform the tax treatment of non-domiciled individuals at a meeting in Downing Street in December.

The chancellor had previously used the autumn Budget in late October to re-commit to Labour’s manifesto promise to abolish the non-dom tax regime, which allows wealthy individuals who live in the UK to be domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes.

But around a month after meeting with Schwarzman, Reeves watered down this commitment.

Speaking at World Economic Forum in Davos in January, she announced that she had been “listening to the concerns of the non-dom community” and would soften the government’s plans.

The government blocked a request from openDemocracy for details of the discussion between Reeves and Schwarzman, as well as other meetings between senior ministers and major financial institutions, including BlackRock and JP Morgan, but has released a heavily redacted follow-up letter.

openDemocracy approached both the Treasury and Blackstone for comment, but neither had responded at the time of publication.

Reeves’ heavily redacted letter

Schwarzman and a senior lobbyist from Blackstone met with the chancellor and her top advisers on 5 December, as part of a series of meetings between the government and the finance sector.

The Treasury told openDemocracy that the meeting’s purpose was “to gather perspectives on the UK as an investment destination and how to strengthen the UK’s position as a world leading investment management hub”.

While the government has so far rejected openDemocracy’s Freedom of Information requests about what was discussed at the meeting, it did release a heavily redacted follow-up letter that Reeves sent to Schwarzman a week later.

Despite the redactions, the letter shows that the tax treatment of high-net worth individuals was a major topic of discussion between the pair.

“Dear Stephen,” the chancellor wrote, “It was my pleasure to meet with you last week. Thank you for your time and the ideas you shared on how I and the government may seek to achieve our ambitions for growth across the UK.”

A section titled “the tax regime for non-domiciled individuals” reveals that Schwarzman “mentioned concerns” about non-dom tax treatment and inheritance tax.

“You noted the significant contribution that non-domiciled individuals make to the UK and mentioned concerns around non-domiciled individuals leaving in response to the reforms announced at the Budget,” Reeves wrote.

“I want to reassure you that I do value the contribution that non-domiciled individuals make to the economy and want to encourage them to spend and invest more of their money in the UK.”

Reeves also used the letter to highlight that some non-doms will be able to “take advantage of a three-year Temporary Repatriation Facility”, a scheme created by the Conservative government that enables former non-doms to bring foreign income and gains into the UK at a discounted tax rate for the first three years.

Reeves also sought to assuage Schwarzman’s apparent concerns about the UK’s inheritance tax (IHT).

“New arrivals to the UK will benefit from 100% UK tax relief on their [foreign income and gains],” she wrote, “provided they have been non-UK tax resident for the previous 10 years.”

The majority of Reeves’ letter to Schwarzman was redacted, raising questions about what else the giant asset manager lobbied for during the meeting.

A Labour MP, who spoke to openDemocracy on condition of anonymity, said: “The chancellor needs to come clean about why she reversed the policy on non-doms. She was lobbied by Blackstone then the policy was quickly dropped.

“She had no similar response to pensioners or Waspi women when she decided not to fulfill their needs. Who’s side is she on?”

The government has also refused to release any records from a number of other meetings with leading financial institutions in response to a series of Freedom of Information requests by openDemocracy.

‘Listening to the non-dom community’

The previous Conservative government announced plans to phase out the non-dom system, which allows wealthy people who live in the UK but are domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes to only pay tax on money they earn in the UK, rather than on all their earnings.

Unveiling the plans in last year’s Spring budget, Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt said there would be a two-year transition period in which existing non-doms would pay a reduced rate on their overseas income.

The following month, Labour went one step further, with Reeves promising that if elected the party would raise £2.6bn by closing “loopholes” in the plans to abolish non-dom exemptions.

The new chancellor repeated this pledge at the Autumn budget in late October. She said the non-dom tax regime would be replaced with “a new residence-based scheme with internationally competitive arrangements” and the transition period upped from two to three years.

Weeks after the Blackstone meeting, Reeves attended the gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she sought to reassure the international business community that the UK is an attractive place to invest.

She announced that the government would alter the policy, in effect allowing current non-doms to pay the reduced rate of tax on more of their earnings throughout the already-extended transition period.

“We have been listening to the concerns that have been raised by the non-dom community,” she said.

Many organisations and individuals have lobbied the government about the policy, including a group formed specifically to oppose the plans, the Foreign Investors for Britain, which has reportedly been in regular contact with No 10’s business adviser, Varun Chandra.

But an intervention from Schwarzman would carry considerable weight.

Schwarzman’s firm, Blackstone, is the largest asset manager in the world, controlling more than $1trn in assets globally. As CEO, Schwarzman’s personal remuneration package for last year was worth over $1bn, and a Forbes estimate in November 2024 put his net worth at around $53bn.

Schwarzman is a Republican donor who worked with the first Trump administration and backed the president’s re-election campaign in 2020. He said he would not support Trump at the 2024 election, calling on the party to “turn to a new generation of leaders”, but later U-turned on this to endorse the now-president.

Blackstone is believed to be the largest commercial landlord in history, holding huge swathes of residential real estate. In 2019, the UN’s special rapporteur on housing said in an open letter that the firm was “having deleterious effects on the right to housing” and accused it of “using its significant resources and political leverage to undermine domestic laws and policies that would in fact improve access to adequate housing consistent with international human rights law.” The firm disputed the contents of the special rapporteurs’ letter.

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingRachel Reeves softened non-dom plans after Blackstone CEO ‘raised concerns’

Peter Mandelson’s Consultancy Lobbied New Government on Behalf of Shell

Spread the love

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

UK Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson. Credit: Credit: IMF / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Labour’s new ambassador to the U.S. founded Global Counsel, a firm with major fossil fuel clients.

Labour’s top diplomat to Donald Trump’s United States leads a public affairs firm that has attempted to influence the new UK government on behalf of the oil and gas giant Shell, and the coal mining company Anglo American.

Peter Mandelson – who was a Cabinet minister under former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – has been accepted as the UK’s ambassador to the U.S. by Trump’s new administration.

In addition to his new diplomatic role, which he will formally begin in February, Mandelson is president and chair of Global Counsel, a London-based political consultancy and lobbying organisation. He will retain shares in the company even after taking up his new position in Washington DC, the Financial Times has reported.

According to official records, after July’s general election Global Counsel lobbied the new Labour government on behalf of Shell, one of the world’s most polluting companies.

Shell is still committed to exploring for new sources of oil and gas and does not have any plans to reduce the overall amount it produces by 2030, in contravention of climate science. In 2021, the District Court of the Hague found that the total CO2 emissions of the Shell group exceeded the emissions of many states, including the Netherlands.

Lobbyists must declare if they have attempted to arrange meetings or influence ministers or senior civil servants on behalf of their clients. However, the contents of these discussions are not publicly available.

Global Counsel seemingly has close ties to the Labour Party. Prior to the 4 July election, the company supplied a staff member to Tulip Siddiq, who served as financial secretary to the Treasury until 14 January, a donation in kind worth £35,835, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests. 

Global Counsel is one of seven consultancies with a history of donating to Labour that have lobbied on behalf of fossil fuel clients since July’s election.

The client list at Mandelson’s lobbying firm also includes Anglo American, a British mining multinational which is a major producer of coal, and U.S. multinational bank JP Morgan, which has financed $430 billion in fossil fuel projects since the 2015 Paris Agreement, including $40 billion in 2023, according to the NGO Banktrack.

Another client, UK bank Standard Chartered, has financed $71 billion in fossil fuel projects in the same period, including $7 billion in 2023. 

Other Global Counsel clients include food and beverage giant Nestle, which has emissions three times the size of its home country Switzerland, and the controversial tech firm Palantir, founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel. 

Mandelson, who called Trump “reckless and dangerous to the world” in 2019, this week told Fox News his previous remarks were “ill-judged and wrong”, and that he has a “fresh respect” for the new U.S. president.

Global Counsel, and the Cabinet Office were approached for comment.

Transatlantic Ties

Mandelson’s appointment comes at a crucial time for climate policy, with a transatlantic network of political actors working increasingly closely to derail global action to achieve net zero emissions. 

Since his inauguration last week, President Trump has removed the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris climate accord, banned offshore wind farms, and declared a “national energy emergency” in order to open new oil and gas projects. 

His plans could add an extra four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to U.S. emissions by 2030, according to the climate publication Carbon Brief. 

Trump received more than $32 million from the oil and gas sector for his 2024 campaign. The fossil fuel industry spent $445 million on political donations, lobbying and advertising between January 2023 and November 2024 to influence Trump and Congress, according to the green advocacy group Climate Power. 

As DeSmog revealed last month, Mandelson’s counterpart, Trump’s ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens, runs a firm with investments in several oil and gas companies, including one wholly owned by his family business. 

The UK government is committed to removing fossil fuels from the UK’s power system by 2030, but this week approved a third runway at Heathrow Airport – the second most polluting airport in the world, according to a 2021 study – and pledged to remove environmental regulations on new building projects. 

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, the next few years are crucial if we want to limit the worst effects of global warming, including drought, flooding, and heat waves.

To keep within the 1.5C warming limit set by the Paris Agreement, the IPCC says that emissions need to be reduced by at least 43 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and at least 60 percent by 2035.

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingPeter Mandelson’s Consultancy Lobbied New Government on Behalf of Shell

Treasury minister: Lobbyists are ‘huge and important part’ of government plans

Spread the love

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

The Treasury is at the centre of a move to refocus the government’s agenda on ‘growth at all costs’
 | Leon Neal/Getty Images

Exclusive: Government is inviting lobbyists and their clients to play a major role in the deregulatory agenda

“Growth comes from business, not the government.”

That was the message a government minister delivered to hundreds of corporate lobbyists, including those representing banks, arms companies and pharmaceuticals, during a webinar this morning.

Lord Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, made the comments at the online event, which was the first in a series aimed at encouraging lobbyists to play a major role in the government’s ‘growth at all costs’ agenda.

In the call, which openDemocracy attended, Livermore made clear that Number 10 sees this agenda as being driven by corporations, while the government is a secondary actor that “work[s] in partnership with business”.

Also present among the 700 attendees were lobbyists representing tech firms, energy giants and consultancies, and those working for agencies including Hanbury, Headland, Lexington, Brunswick, Cavendish and Grayling.

These people and their clients are a “huge and important part” of the government’s plans, Livermore said, stressing that ministers are “really keen to draw on… the expertise that exists within your organisations and your clients”.

He added that the government’s focus is on getting rid of “stifling regulation that has for too long held business back” and “removing barriers to growth that we, in partnership with business, identify”.

The treasury minister also discussed Great British Energy’s role in “derisking investment” and providing capital for public-private partnerships, to make renewable infrastructure investment more attractive to the market.

While the government has been unapologetic about its outreach to business as a means to drive growth, Labour’s critics say an ever-closer relationship with lobbyists only heightens the impression of a government that does not have an agenda of its own.

Speaking to openDemocracy after the call, Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski said: “With inequality rife, the government should be listening to the people who keep our country running and those suffering, not hosting desperate mass Zoom calls with arms dealers and oil giants.”

Cutting red tape

Setting out the government’s priorities, Livermore put a particular focus on achieving major reform to the planning system to encourage more commercial and infrastructure projects, and getting rid of regulations that “stand in the way of businesses investing”.

Livermore talked up the recent ousting of the head of the competitions regulator and his replacement with a former Amazon executive as evidence that the government is taking seriously its deregulatory agenda.

He also mentioned the recent push for regulators to submit proposals for growth and said Labour’s National Wealth Fund will “help catalyse private investment into sectors where at the moment, perhaps there’s a too high degree of risk”.

“We can use the National Wealth Fund to help derisk some of those investments,” said the minister. Economists describe this process as the state stepping in to improve the private returns on infrastructure assets.

Livermore continued that the fund could be used to “guide investments, particularly into the kind of clean energy investments of the future that we want to see”.

The government-lobbyist calls are being led by a new partnerships team in No 10 fronted by James Carroll, who has previously worked for the party on external relations and business engagement.

Also on the call was a senior executive at Anacta UK, described by The Times as the “first Starmerite lobbying firm”, and a banking lobbyist who is also involved in the running of Labour in the City, a group which convenes Labour supporters who work in financial services.

Lobbyists were able to submit questions during the call. One criticised “some parts of the business community” which have been “vocally critical about the government’s handling of the economy so far,” describing it as “unhelpful”.

They then asked: “How can firms who don’t want to talk down the UK but would rather promote a more positive narrative about the many opportunities open to British businesses best work with the government to do so?”

This prompted Carroll to quip: “I promise I haven’t planted that question.”

Carroll then rounded out the call by reiterating the importance the government places on developing this relationship with lobbyists.

“Just to emphasise,” he said, “your clients [and] your expertise is critical to delivering these ambitious national missions the prime minister has set out and the chancellor reiterated this week.”

Polanski, the Green’s deputy leader, said the plans to derisk investment “amounts to privatising the rewards and socialising the risks”.

He added: “Regulation exists for a reason, Grenfell stands as a towering reminder of lives lost and the total failure of standards.

“This isn’t growth for the many, just more wealth for the super-rich while the rest of us are told to look up at their private jets and wait for the trickle down.”

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingTreasury minister: Lobbyists are ‘huge and important part’ of government plans

The BlackRock letters: inside Labour’s ‘close partnership’

Spread the love

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves hosting an investment roundtable discussion with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and members of the BlackRock executive board at 10 Downing Street  | Frank Augstein – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Jonathan Reynolds told the investment bank that he looked forward to working together to “change the face of our UK”

Senior executives from BlackRock, one of the world’s most controversial companies, last week sat down opposite Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves in Downing Street.

The government’s laser-focus on private investment as the key means of driving economic growth has inevitably led to a reliance on the world’s big money machines, such as BlackRock. But this is a relationship that Labour initially developed in opposition – and which has only become cosier since the party entered government.

The meeting on Thursday between Starmer, Reeves, investment minister Poppy Gustafsson and several members of BlackRock’s board was not the first time that senior figures from the world’s largest asset manager have met with ministers in recent months.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also made a star turn at Labour’s investment summit in October and posed for pictures with the prime minister when he visited New York in September. Senior BlackRock figures also attended a summer reception for business leaders at No 10, as openDemocracy revealed previously.

‘On a personal note’

As Starmer’s cabinet ministers were appointed in July, hundreds of companies contacted them to offer their congratulations, pitch their value to the government, and request meetings. Inevitably, some had more success than others in obtaining access to their targets. BlackRock was one of them.

With around $10tn (yes, trillion) under its management, BlackRock is among the most powerful financial institutions on the planet. To many, it is also among the most “evil”, because it continues to pump billions into fossil fuels and arms companies, and its reach extends into almost every aspect of the economy and society.

At 5pm on Monday 8 July, a managing director at the investment giant emailed Jonathan Reynolds, who’d been appointed the UK’s new secretary of state for business and trade just a few days earlier.  

“Dear Secretary of State,” the executive wrote, “on behalf of all of us here at BlackRock, please find attached a formal letter of congratulations from myself and our UK Chair, Sandra Boss. 

“And may I add, on a personal note, it is a pleasure after all these years to address you as such!”

The BlackRock executive was Anthony Manchester, a former senior civil servant who held roles across various government departments between 2001 and 2015, including the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

The attached letter began with the same pleasantries and congratulations expressed by Manchester, before highlighting BlackRock’s broad range of clientele and the scale of their footprint across the breadth of the UK economy, name-dropping British Airways, Rolls Royce and AstraZeneca as investments. 

Next came the key point: 

“As you know, we also share the government’s view that infrastructure investment can play a critical role in improving economic growth and productivity. We believe infrastructure is poised to become one of the fastest-growing segments in private markets globally.

“As our Chairman and CEO Larry Fink has recently written, private capital market financing, combined with policy pragmatism, are necessary to meet countries’ infrastructure needs and thereby enhance economic growth and productivity.

“We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss our work on funding the projects and enterprises that drive the economy and building the UK’s case as an investment destination. We will work with your team to get this meeting in the diary.

“Until then, congratulations once again on your appointment.”

Cutting through the corporate glaze, we can roughly understand the point being made here. In effect, BlackRock is highlighting that Labour’s entire political project rests on the willingness of companies like BlackRock to plough private capital into the foundational components of our society (and extracting massive profits in the process). 

Reynolds’ reply to BlackRock, when it eventually came in August, gushed with praise for the firm and the wider financial services sector. 

“Partnership with the Financial Services sector will be critical to developing and delivering on our industrial strategy and supporting small businesses. The sector underpins UK investment and trade, and its continued success is critical to lay the strong foundations for economic growth that this country needs.”

Reynolds added: “I would like to thank you for your long-standing investment in the UK, and partnership in driving growth, jobs and innovation. Blackrock has an impressive reach driving investment into the UK across sectors of our economy and your work is vital to economic growth. Funding our priority projects and investment in infrastructure is an important part of this…”

“We do not underestimate the importance of the UK’s Financial Services sector to the wider economy, or its potential to help deliver social value and the clean energy transition. To succeed we need everyone to play their part. I am looking forward to working with you in this common endeavour of national renewal. 

“Together, we will change the face of our United Kingdom for the better.

“Thank you for your kind offer to meet. I would be delighted to accept this invitation. My Private Office will be in touch with you to arrange a suitable time. Thank you once again for writing and I look forward to working with you.”

‘Getting BlackRock to rebuild Britain’

In the asset management space, BlackRock has historically been a fairly hands-off investor, the bulk of its holdings being significant but typically not controlling shares in many of the world’s biggest companies – generally between 5-10% – according to Brett Christopher’s survey of the industry, Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Rule the World.

Think of an industry, then think of the top companies within it, and there’s a fairly good chance that BlackRock has shares in it. Christophers notes that, as a proportion of its overall holdings, investments placed in infrastructure – things like the electricity grid, water systems, and toll roads – were relatively small. 

But in January this year, the firm announced it would purchase Global Infrastructure Partners, which controls around $170bn worth of assets worldwide, including Gatwick Airport and Hornsea 1, a project to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm in the North Sea. This purchase, which was completed last month, reportedly makes BlackRock the second largest asset manager in the infrastructure space, after ‘the vampire kangaroo’, Macquarie. 

Critics will argue that when asset managers own significant chunks of infrastructure, their priority is their investors (including sovereign wealth funds and pension funds), rather than society, or even the planet. The primary purpose of infrastructure, the argument goes, becomes the generation of profit, rather than providing a working, reliable service. In practice, this might mean cutting investment while raising prices.

BlackRock and its ilk buying up the UK’s infrastructure would be controversial enough, but the way in which Labour is seeking to encourage this process is even worse. Writing in The Guardian ahead of the general election, economist Daniela Gabor said Labour’s plan for getting back into government amounted to: “get BlackRock to rebuild Britain”. 

She wrote: “Labour’s strategy raises a bigger set of questions about the type of state we want. Starmer’s vision for government-by-BlackRock reduces the question of state capacity to ‘how do I get BlackRock to invest in infrastructure assets?’ This model involves the state in effect subsidising the privatisation of everyday life.” 

In simple terms, the government’s plans to use public funds to ‘derisk’ private investment means that the taxpayer takes on much of the risk involved, while the private sector stands to reap most of the benefits. This is particularly true of essential infrastructure, which the government cannot let fail and so must step in to cover losses in the event that something goes wrong.

Gabor continues: “This doesn’t only make it harder to bring public goods back into public ownership; it also allows big finance to tighten the grip on the social contract with citizens, and to become the ultimate arbiter of climate, energy and welfare politics, which will have profound distributional, structural and political consequences.”

Immediately after the Downing Street meeting yesterday, Starmer took to social media to trumpet his sitdown with BlackRock. His message echoes the tone and substance of BlackRock’s letter to Reynolds months prior.

He wrote that the government’s mission, to “deliver growth, create wealth and put more money in people’s pockets” can “only be achieved by working in close partnership with businesses and investors”. 

The prime minister continued: “BlackRock has a big footprint in the UK, and supports thousands of jobs across the country. Their insight on how we can put the UK on the world’s stage as a top investment destination and turbocharge growth is invaluable. Delighted to welcome them to Downing Street today to continue my government’s partnership with leading businesses.”

Exactly which people’s pockets are about to be filled with more money remains unclear. 

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Continue ReadingThe BlackRock letters: inside Labour’s ‘close partnership’

‘We Need a Shift’: Climate Leaders Demand End of COP Dominated by Petrostates, Big Oil Lobby

Spread the love

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Activists protesting against fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance at COP29 hold a demonstration on November 15, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

“It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” a coalition of scientists and advocates wrote as more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed COP29 in Azerbaijan.

The crushing influence of petrostates and fossil fuel industry lobbyists has rendered the annual United Nations climate conference unfit to deliver the kinds of sweeping changes needed to avert catastrophic warming, a coalition of leading scientists, advocates, and policy experts warned in an open letter released Friday as the first week of the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan came to a close.

Acknowledging that the COP process has achieved “important diplomatic milestones” and “a remarkable consensus” on climate targets over nearly three decades of international negotiations, the coalition wrote that the policy framework produced by dozens of U.N. summits is not sufficient to solve the pressing crises facing humanity in an age of runaway warming and large-scale climate devastation.

“Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: Global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes,” reads the letter, whose signatories include former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres, Club of Rome global ambassador Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research director Johan Rockström.

“Twenty-eight COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this, but it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the letter continues. “Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter calls not for a complete abandonment of COP but rather “a fundamental overhaul” that would enable the U.N.-led summit “to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.”

The coalition of experts and advocates recommended a number of reforms for future COP summits, including “strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy,” new “mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments,” and changes to limit the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists and ensure equitable representation.

“At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities, and vulnerable nations,” Figueres said in a statement Friday. “We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”

Rockström added that “there is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale.”

“Planet Earth is in critical condition,” he said. “We have already crossed six planetary boundaries.”

“2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry.”

The open letter was released in the wake of a new analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition showing that at least 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the COP29 summit—giving the industry primarily responsible for the global climate emergency more representation than nearly every country present at the talks in Baku.

According to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, the fossil fuel industry has more representation at COP29 than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined.

Additionally, The Guardian reported Friday that “at least 132 oil and gas company bosses and staff were invited” to COP29 as “guests” by Azerbaijan’s government and “given host country badges.”

“2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry,” said Joseph Sikulu of 350.org. “How can we achieve the ambition that is needed to save our homes when these negotiations are continually flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists? There is a ban on tobacco lobbyists from attending the World Health Organization’s summit, why is that not the case for the fossil fuel industry at COP?”

“We demand that the upcoming COP presidencies set clear rules against the presence of fossil fuel interests at the negotiating table,” Sikulu added. “Our lives depend on it.”

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, joined climate advocates on Friday in decrying Big Oil’s capture of the U.N. climate summit.

“It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” said Gore.

Lamenting that the follow-through on COP28 commitments to transition away from fossil fuels has been “very weak,” Gore said he believes “one of the reasons for that is that the petrostates have too much control over the process.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

Continue Reading‘We Need a Shift’: Climate Leaders Demand End of COP Dominated by Petrostates, Big Oil Lobby