COP29: With ‘no sense of urgency’, world leaders huddle in Azerbaijan’s Baku for UN climate talks

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 climate talks are more like the World Chess Federation finals, 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 with their countries responsible for more than 70% of 2023’s heat-trapping gases.

Biggest polluters and strongest economies China and the United States aren’t sending their No. 1s. The four most populous nations with more than 42% of all the world’s population aren’t having leaders speak.

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“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.”

On Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, United Kingdom’s prime minister Keir Starmer and Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan are the headliners of among the nearly 50 leaders set to speak.

But there’ll be a strong showing is expected 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 set to speak over the two-day World Leaders’ Summit at the COP29 conference.

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As a sense of how the bar for celebrity has lowered, on Tuesday morning photographers and video cameras ran along side one leader walking through the halls of the meeting. It was the emergency management minister for host country Azerbaijan.