Earth’s Biggest Polluters Don’t Send Leaders to COP29

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — World leaders converged Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries were noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup.

But 2024’s 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’s heat-trapping gases.
“The people who are responsible for this are absent,” said Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko during his speech at the summit. “How 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’s not relevant? There’s nothing to be proud about.”
France isn’t the only one. The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — aren’t sending their No. 1s. India and Indonesia’s heads of state are also not in attendance, meaning the four most populous nations with more than 42% of all the world’s population aren’t having leaders speak.
“It’s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There’s no sense of urgency,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. He said this explains “the absolute mess we’re finding ourselves in.”
The world has witnessed the hottest day, months and year on record “and a master class in climate destruction,” 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’s re-election in the United States, that the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.”
Host Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev kicked off two scheduled days of world leaders’ speeches by lambasting Armenia, western news media, climate activists and critics who highlighted 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.”