Earth's biggest polluters aren't sending leaders to U.N. climate talks in year of weather extremes

Several world leaders at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

By Seth Borenstein, Melina Walling and Sibi Arasu

Nov. 12, 2024 10:06 AM PT

BAKU, Azerbaijan — World leaders converged Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference with plenty of big names and powerful countries noticeably absent.

Past talks often had the star power of a soccer World Cup. But the meeting just getting underway in Azerbaijan won’t have the top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries — a group responsible for more than 70% of the heat-trapping gases emitted last year.

“The people who are responsible for this are absent,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said during his speech at the summit. “There’s nothing to be proud about.”

The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — aren’t sending their No. 1s. Neither are India and Indonesia. That’s the world’s four most populous nations, with more than 42% of the globe’s inhabitants.

“It’s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There’s no sense of urgency,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics. He said this explains “the absolute mess we’re finding ourselves in.”

Leaders highlight inevitable warming and energy transition

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world leaders who did show up that the planet is seeing “a master class in climate destruction” in a year virtually certain to be hottest on record.

But Guterres held out hope, saying in a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s reelection in the United States that the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.”

U.N. officials said when Trump was first elected in 2016, the world had 180 gigawatts of clean energy and 700,000 electric vehicles. Now it’s 600 gigawatts of clean energy and 14 million electric vehicles.

Host and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev kicked off two scheduled days of world leaders’ speeches by lambasting Armenia, western news media, climate activists and critics of his country’s rich oil and gas history and trade, calling them hypocritical since the United States is the world’s biggest oil producer. He said it was “not fair” to call Azerbaijan a “petrostate” because it produces less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas.

Oil and gas are “a gift of the God” just like the sun, wind and minerals, Aliyev said. “Countries should not be blamed for having them. And should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them.”

The Rev. Fletcher Harper of GreenFaith, a faith-focused environmental activism group, responded by calling fossil fuels “literally the highway to hell for billions of people and the planet.”

Aliyev said his country will push hard for a green transition away from fossil fuels, “but at the same time, we must be realistic.”

With many heavyweights away, other nations fill the void

One of the most notable leaders to make the talks is U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He announced an 81% emissions reduction target on 1990 levels by 2035, in line with the Paris climate agreement goal to limit warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial times. That’s up from the 78% the U.K. had already pledged.

U.K. greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by almost half from 1990 levels, mainly because of the almost complete removal of coal from electricity generation.

Many climate analysts welcomed the announcement. “It sets a strong bar for other countries,” said Debbie Hillier, the global climate policy lead of Mercy Corps. Nick Mabey from the climate think tank E3G said “other nations should follow suit with high-ambition targets.”

There’s also a strong showing from the leaders of some of the most climate-vulnerable countries. Several small island nation presidents and over a dozen leaders from countries across Africa are speaking at the two-day World Leaders’ Summit portion of the conference.

“Our 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,” said Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine. “Time will judge those that fail to make the transition.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez noted that the deadly floods in his country last month “would have been less likely and less intense without the effect of climate change.”

“We must ensure natural disasters do not multiply or replicate,” he said. “Let’s do what we promised to do seven years ago in Paris.”

Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said the world is in “a season of superlatives.” Barbados was hit by destructive Hurricane Beryl this year.

“These extreme weather events that the world is facing daily suggest that humanity and the planet are hurtling towards catastrophe,” she said.

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 Group of 20 summit of major global economies.

The recent election in the United States, Germany’s government collapse, natural disasters and personal illnesses also have kept some leaders away.

Climate negotiators focus on money

The major focus of this year’s talks is climate finance — wealthier nations compensating poor countries for damage from climate change’s weather extremes, helping fund their transition from fossil fuels and helping them with adaptation.

“It’s not surprising that richer nations are trying to downplay the importance of this crucial finance COP,” said Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists. “They’re trying to evade their responsibility to pay up.”

Nations are negotiating over huge amounts of money, anywhere from $100 billion a year to $1.3 trillion a year. That money “is not charity, it’s an investment,” Guterres said. “Developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed.”

Climate analysts welcomed an announcement by a group of 11 multilateral development banks including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank that their annual climate financing for the rest of the decade should reach $120 billion.

In the negotiations backroom, the G77 developing economies and China negotiating bloc put forward a demand of $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance for the first time. A representative said the bloc cannot accept the framework submitted for negotiations.

“We will not get a strong new goal in Baku if it is not shaped in a way that respects the G77 positions,” said Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of Moroccan climate think tank Imal Initiative for Climate and Development. “The G77 and China are setting the agenda.”

Borenstein, Walling and Arasu write for the Associated Press.