World leaders are converging Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup.
But 2024\u2019s COP29 climate talks are more like the International Chess Federation world championship, lacking the recognizable names but big on nerd power and strategy. The top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries will not appear. Their nations are responsible for more than 70% of 2023\u2019s heat-trapping gases.
\u201cThe people who are responsible for this are absent,\u201d said Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko during his speech at the summit. \u201cHow effective are our actions at this meeting, when the President of France, which was the country which was responsible for the Paris is not even here, feels it\u2019s not relevant? There\u2019s nothing to be proud about.\u201d
France isn\u2019t the only one. The world\u2019s biggest polluters and strongest economies \u2014 China and the United States \u2014 aren\u2019t sending their No. 1s. India and Indonesia\u2019s heads of state are also not in attendance, meaning the four most populous nations with more than 42% of all the world\u2019s population aren\u2019t having leaders speak.
\u201cIt\u2019s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There\u2019s no sense of urgency,\u201d said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics.
He said this explains \u201cthe absolute mess we\u2019re finding ourselves in.\u201d
Leaders highlight inevitable warming and energy transition
The world has witnessed the hottest day, months and year on record \u201cand a master class in climate destruction,\u201d United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world leaders who did show up.
But Guterres held out hope, saying, in a veiled reference to Donald Trump\u2019s re-election in the United States, that the \u201cclean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.\u201d
United Nations officials said in 2016, when Trump was first elected, there were 180 gigawatts of clean energy and 700,000 electric vehicles in the world. Now there\u2019s 600 gigawatts of clean energy and 14 million electric vehicles.
Host Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev kicked off two scheduled days of world leaders\u2019 speeches by lambasting Armenia, western news media, climate activists and critics who highlighted his country\u2019s rich oil and gas history and trade, calling them hypocritical since the United States is the world\u2019s biggest oil producer.
He said it was \u201cnot fair\u201d to call Azerbaijan a \u201cpetrostate\u201d because it produces less than 1% of the world\u2019s oil and gas.
Oil and gas are \u201ca gift of the God\u201d just like the sun, wind and minerals, Aliyev said. \u201cCountries should not be blamed for having them. And should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them.\u201d
Rev. Fletcher Harper, of GreenFaith, in a statement called out the reference to religion and instead called fossil fuels \u201cliterally the highway to hell for billions of people and the planet.\u201d
As the host and president of the climate talks, called COP29, Aliyev said his country will push hard for a green transition away from fossil fuels, \u201cbut at the same time, we must be realistic.\u201d
With many heavyweights away, UK and smaller nations fill the void
One of the most notable leaders to make the talks is UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He announced an 81% emissions reduction target on 1990 levels by 2035, in line with the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
Many climate analysts welcomed the announcement. \u201cIt sets a strong bar for other countries,\u201d said Debbie Hillier, the global climate policy lead of Mercy Corps. Nick Mabey from the climate think-tank E3G said \u201cother nations should follow suit with high-ambition targets.\u201d
There\u2019s also a strong showing from the leaders of some of the world\u2019s most climate-vulnerable countries. Several small island nations presidents and over a dozen leaders from countries across Africa are speaking the two-day World Leaders\u2019 Summit.
\u201cOur forebears map the tides with sticks, coconut fronds and shells. It is in our blood to know when a tide is turning. And on climate, the tide is turning today,\u201d said Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine. \u201cTime will judge those that fail to make the transition.\u201d
United Nations officials downplayed the lack of head of state star power, saying that every country is represented and active in the climate talks.
One logistical issue is that next week, the leaders of the most powerful countries have to be half a world away in Brazil for the G20 meetings.
The recent election in the United States, Germany\u2019s government collapse, natural disasters and personal illnesses also have kept some leaders away.
Climate negotiators focus on money
The major focus of the negotiations is climate finance, which is rich nations trying to help poor countries pay for transitioning their economies away from fossil fuels, coping with climate change\u2019s
\u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that richer nations are trying to downplay the importance of this crucial finance COP,\u201d said Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to evade their responsibility to pay up.\u201d
Nations are negotiating over huge amounts of money, anywhere from $100 billion a year to $1.3 trillion a year. That money \u201cis not charity, it\u2019s an investment,\u201d Guterres said.
\u201cDeveloping countries must not leave Baku empty-handed.\u201d
In the negotiations backroom, the G77 and China negotiating bloc \u2014 which includes many of the world\u2019s developing countries \u2014 put forward a unified demand of $1.3 trillion annual climate finance for the first time. The bloc\u2019s representative said the framework submitted for negotiations cannot be accepted by them and will need to be revised.
\u201cWe will not get a strong new goal in Baku if it is not shaped in a way that respects the G77 positions,\u201d said Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of Moroccan climate think-tank Initiative for Climate and Development. \u201cThe G77 and China are setting the agenda.\u201d (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World leaders are converging Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup.But 2024\u2019s COP29 climate talks are more like the International Chess Federation world championship, lacking the recognizable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}