Earth's biggest polluters aren't sending leaders to UN climate talks in a year of weather extremes

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'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 per cent of 2023's heat-trapping gases.

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"The people who are responsible for this are absent," said Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko 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. India and Indonesia's heads of state are also not in attendance, meaning the four most populous nations with more than 42 per cent 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."

Leaders highlight inevitable warming and energy transition

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."

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's 600 gigawatts of clean energy and 14 million electric vehicles.

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 per cent 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."

Rev. Fletcher Harper, of GreenFaith, in a statement called out the reference to religion and instead called fossil fuels "literally the highway to hell for billions of people and the planet."

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, "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 per cent 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. "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 world's 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' Summit.

"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."

Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanchez noted that the deadly floods in the 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."

Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, said the world is in "a season of superlatives." Barbados was hit with destructive Hurricane Beryl earlier 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 G20 meetings. 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 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's upcoming harms and compensating for damages from weather extremes.

“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.”

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Nations are negotiating over huge amounts of money, anywhere from US$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."

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 was also welcome by climate analysts.

In the negotiations backroom, the G77 and China negotiating bloc -- which includes many of the world's developing countries -- put forward a unified demand of $1.3 trillion annual climate finance for the first time. The bloc's representative said the framework submitted for negotiations cannot be accepted by them and will need to be revised.

"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."

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