Economy

Shifting political agendas in Latin America knock climate change from priority lists

24/7 Wall St. Staff

Published: June 28, 2022 11:12 am

By David Callaway, Callaway Climate Insights

(Michael Molinski is a senior economist at Trendline Economics. He’s worked for Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo, and previously as a foreign correspondent and editor for Bloomberg News and MarketWatch.)

LOS ANGELES (Callaway Climate Insights) — From Sunday’s election of a leftist president in Colombia and Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections in October, to the Mexican president’s inauspicious absence from this month’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, is climate change taking a backseat to politics?

All three countries — Colombia, Brazil and Mexico — are undergoing massive political changes. And if those countries are not careful, the advances on climate change over the past several years could be relegated to a second-tier priority or even reversed.

That was clear at the Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles in early June. Not only were there not any substantial agreements on climate change, it was not even on this year’s agenda. . . .

To read the full column, all our insights, news and in-depth interviews, please subscribe and support our great climate finance journalism.

Callaway Climate Insights Newsletter