The specific nature of the election end result meant questions concerning the new U.S. administration had been just about answered by the point delegates arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan this week for the COP29 UN Local weather Change Convention.
As Semafor founder and CEO Ben Smith instructed us on The PR Week podcast this week: “It was a really brief, clear, decisive election.”
Our correspondent Chris Daniels reported that greater than 50,000 delegates registered for the 10-day summit, making it probably the second-largest COP (Convention of the Events) because the first one in 1995. The lineup of holiday makers included diplomats, company leaders, buyers and environmentalists.
Smith stated Semafor had a correspondent in Baku, however that “it was a little bit of a graveyard on the market.”
And Ruder Finn’s London-based senior associate Terri Bloore instructed Daniels there have been noticeably fewer folks round than final 12 months’s occasion in Dubai, so it appears many who registered didn’t really flip up. And others left early after they realized the discussions going down had been more and more irrelevant within the context of an incoming new U.S. regime that might seemingly reverse current local weather insurance policies.
Trump set out his stall when he referred to as international warming “one of many nice scams in historical past” and vowed to withdraw from the 2015 Paris local weather accord. It’s one space the place he could ultimately conflict heads together with his latest finest good friend Elon Musk, who regardless of his hardcore angle to the “woke agenda” makes most of his fortune out of electrical autos and understands the necessity to deal with the worldwide local weather disaster.
However regardless of his disdain for the local weather agenda, Bloore confessed that “Trump is on the lips, or at the least the minds, of most delegates right here. Even when not spoken about straight, he’s the proverbial elephant within the room.”
The Monetary Occasions reported that international locations had been deserting COP29, together with France, which pulled out its high negotiator after host nation Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev criticized President Emmanuel Macron’s actions in its Pacific Island territories. Argentina’s crew additionally withdrew from the occasion following Trump ally President Javier Milei’s dialog with the U.S. president-elect on Tuesday.
Aliyev stated “oil is a present of the gods” and slammed critics of his nation’s fossil gas industries in his opening deal with to COP29, which might be not the philosophy the founders of the occasion had in thoughts after they arrange the convention within the mid-90s to battle greenhouse fuel emissions.
President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi from India and China’s President Xi Jinpin had been additionally absent from COP29, whereas there was ample presence from Russia and the remainder of Japanese Europe, in addition to fossil gas executives from the likes of ExxonMobil, BP, Saudi Aramco and Sinopec, and consultants from McKinsey, Deloitte, BCG and EY.
The CEO of Exxon instructed Semafor’s correspondent that costs of oil are too low to trouble drilling. EIC Smith defined on The PR Week that “there’s a dynamic financial system underway that’s not actually within the management of politicians,” by which the worldwide power sector is investing closely in battery expertise, essential minerals and issues like that.”
“The Saudis are beginning to consider a world by which they’ve pumped the final drop of oil,” stated Smith. “Relying on the way you see it, enterprise has taken over the enterprise of local weather from governments and nonprofits.”
PR groups in Baku from corporations together with Weber Shandwick, Edelman, Ruder Finn and FTI Consulting had been concentrating extra on offering briefings for his or her purchasers again at residence fairly than doing campaigns or activations for these purchasers. Teneo was the primary PR adviser to the COP29 organizers, with former BP comms lead Geoff Morrell a number one technique presence.
It feels as if the occasion has taken on a lifetime of its personal with agendas method past the supposedly central give attention to local weather, even though 2024 is ready to be the most popular 12 months on report for the planet.
Given his affect on the occasion regardless of not being there, comms groups will now be offering loads of counsel to purchasers about navigating the brand new administration, as President-elect Trump reveals his proposed Cupboard picks.
That course of might be much more topical by the point of the following World Financial Discussion board gathering in Davos from 20-24 January, 2025.
Given the primary day of the convention coincides with Inauguration Day within the U.S. – and likewise, coincidentally and considerably paradoxically, Martin Luther King Day – it’s seemingly that Trump may also be the one sport on the town at Davos, regardless of the actual fact he’s very unlikely to attend.
The conversations will nonetheless be essential, and plenty of offers might be struck, however many delegates could have their minds elsewhere and others gained’t attend in any respect.
“It is a bit of a commerce present,” famous Semafor’s Smith. “Populists love being there as a result of they’ll say they went to the highest of the mountain with the elites and caught it to them. Javier Milei was there final 12 months denouncing all the things; [president of The Heritage Foundation] Kevin Roberts, the architect or Mission 2025 and would-be Trump finest good friend, was there so he might go residence to Washington and brag to his allies that he had gone into the lion’s den.”
If the Heritage Basis’s Mission 2025 report is certainly a template for Trump’s insurance policies as soon as he formally takes energy subsequent January, there might be an unequivocal and Friedman-esque strategy to environmental, social and governance (ESG) that’s at odds with the philosophies of the COP and WEF organizers.
It’ll additionally run opposite to the Enterprise Roundtable’s Assertion on the Function of a Company from 2019, which says firms ought to serve not solely their shareholders, but in addition ship worth to their clients, staff, suppliers and communities by which they function. Mission 2025 is all concerning the primacy of shareholders and the need of the market.
The concept good enterprise will be worthwhile enterprise is anathema to this idea, which sees socially accountable or ethical agendas as ideology, not enterprise. They are saying enterprise managers are “appropriating shareholder wealth” after they use company sources to additional their “private political opinions.”
On this planet of Mission 2025 advocates, this isn’t about doing the best factor, aligning your self with the wants of your staff and the needs of shoppers who need to know what the manufacturers and firms stand for that they buy from, work for or take care of. Relatively, it’s “utilizing financial energy to undermine democratic establishments and civil society.”
Mission 2025 believes DEI, ESG and local weather choices have been used to “launder company fame” and acquire favorable remedy from regulators when it comes to anti-trust legal guidelines and mergers.
The coverage template recommends that Congress ought to “examine ESG practices as a canopy for anticompetitive exercise and potential unfair commerce practices.” It’s seemingly this has been one of many drivers behind firms publicly stating they’re pulling again from DEI and different initiatives. And it impacts their branding and messaging efforts.
PR professionals, communication advisers and fame wranglers are going to be busier than ever navigating this new surroundings, which can comprise an uncommon combination of blunt instrument and sophisticated maneuvering.
And they’re going to must be ready for any eventuality, as a result of one factor now we have realized about President-elect Trump is that he’s a disruptor who’s able to turning 180 levels on a dime and throwing digital grenades right into a scenario simply to see what chaos may happen.