The UN climate summit (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, began with the country’s president singing the praises of fossil fuels and ended with a climate finance deal dubbed by many an ‘insult.’
As delegates fly back to their home countries on private jets with virtually nothing to report, the question that remains can only be ‘can we stop this now?’
The big topic at COP29 this year was how much should the most developed countries, those who historically were most to blame for polluting the planet, pay developing countries to reduce their carbon output. The result hashed out was $300 billion a year by 2035. While the richest countries sucked through their teeth and said, ‘That’s the best we can offer,’ poorer countries, those that have taken on industry from the richest, took it as an insult.
The whole debacle now begs the question of why we have the COP meetings at all. With a climate change denier about to enter the White House, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, King Charles, Joe Biden, and Ursula Von Der Leyen all not bothering this year, each with their own reasons, another COP meeting comes to a close with little being achieved but a token gesture to help poorer countries deal with the effects of fossil fuel use.
Climate summit fails on hottest year in history
Almost 10 years since the COP21 in Paris, which successfully resulted in the Paris agreement, the bickering and finger-pointing has only worsened, and all the while 2024 is looking like it will go down as the world’s hottest year ever. ‘We are sleepwalking into a dystopian future,’ said Payam Akhavan, a lawyer for the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change. ‘The COP process has thus far failed because it depends on the good faith of the major polluters, and instead of doing what is necessary for our common survival, they are literally adding fuel to the flames.’
With the last 3 COP meetings being held in petrostates (Egypt, Dubai, and Azerbaijan) and another Donald Trump who famously said he would ‘drill baby drill’ and take the US out of the Paris agreement, where does global climate agreement go from here?
