Given the correct proportions, the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has aroused a sense of optimism very similar to the elections of Barack Obama, in 2008, and Joseph Biden, in 2020.
With governments not refractory to the UN Convention on Climate Change in carbon powers such as the USA and Brazil, the hope was recurrent that subsequent conferences of the signatory parties (COPs) would achieve some progress in the negotiations resumed a few days or weeks after the pleas.
In the case of Lula and the COP27 in Egypt, only one week, this Sunday (6th). The president-elect must attend the summit and he is already being celebrated, more for succeeding the environmental villain Jair Bolsonaro than for his undeniable achievements in this area (just as Biden was praised for defeating Donald Trump, the guru of the current Brazilian president).
The Bolsonaro government took questionable measures regarding the climactic situation, which fooled no one, domestically and internationally. National commitments took the year 2005 as a reference, and the last Brazilian inventory of greenhouse gases changed the emissions baseline, and it was not little: from 2.1 GtCO2e, the official number for that year became 2, 8 GtCO2e.
Lula's first test, therefore, will be to review these numbers. Then, much more complicated, to set the country on a trajectory to meet the goals when he leaves the government in 2026 if he keeps his word not to run for reelection and does not suffer a new blow from the right wing.
Translated by Cassy Dias