World leaders who came for the start of the United Nations climate change conference COP29 in Azerbaijan are now heading home.
And as the whine of private jet engines fades in the skies above the capital Baku, their teams of negotiators get down to the real work: trying, once again, to keep the global climate talks from falling apart.
Most of them are already tired. They were up until 4am the day before the talks began just trying to get all 197 countries represented here to agree on the agenda for the two weeks of negotiations ahead.
They were sombre too, with Donald Trump‘s fossil-fuelled election speech still ringing in their ears.
The challenges ahead
Negotiators have endured four years of a previous Trump administration trying, and ultimately failing, to pull out of the Paris Agreement.
But this time they know his team will have learned from its previous efforts, and damage may be harder to limit.
They also know that populist movements around the world, sharing Mr Trump’s climate scepticism, threaten to weaken the stomachs of heads of state that had, previously, been hungry to decarbonise their economies.
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The president of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s COP, didn’t help much either by using his opening speech to describe his country’s oil wealth as a “gift from God”.
Ilham Aliyev isn’t held in particularly high regard by many of his guests.
The son of supposedly democratic former president Heydar Aliyev, he is unafraid of imprisoning his political opponents, and has amassed extraordinary family wealth off the back of that divine gift.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. Pic: Reuters
But President Aliyev did speak truth to the hypocrisy that has long attended climate talks. He called out the US media’s description of his country as a petrostate, when America produces 20 times more oil and gas than his country does.
He also blasted EU criticism at the summit of his country’s lack of ambition in cutting its oil and gas production at COP29 – after previously begging Azerbaijan to increase it to keep the bloc from freezing following the war in Ukraine.
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Starmer’s ambitious plan
Trying to chivvy it all along are the throngs of indigenous and youth groups, NGOs and eco adjutants of this climate-saving roadshow.
Even at this well-organised summit, it’s tough for them too. The food is eye-wateringly expensive and there’s a dire lack of places for anyone to sit down and eat it – let alone reflect on humanity’s imminent peril.
But the mood lifted when Sir Keir Starmer touched down with an ambitious plan to cut UK carbon emissions by a colossal 81% by 2035.
It’s the only commitment so far from a rich country that meets the new level of ambition required to meet the Paris Agreement’s rapidly retreating targets.
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While the UK can’t be accused of hypocrisy, like most other countries with ambitious carbon-cutting plans, it’s yet to introduce credible policies on how to meet them.
And most importantly for these talks, the prime minister didn’t show up with an offer of more money to help fund a global transition away from fossil fuels. An unpopular omission, given that this round of talks is dedicated to securing a new finance plan.
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Taliban appeal for help
Not as unpopular though as the Taliban, which chose to send a delegation of three to COP29.
A newfound net-zero fundamentalism? Reportedly not – they’ve come to appeal to the international community to help Afghanistan, crippled by extreme weather events in recent years.
The Taliban have only been allowed to attend as observers as they’re not recognised by the UN.
And while there’s much sympathy here for the people of Afghanistan, with the rule of law and gender equality being very much at the heart COP – observe is all the Taliban delegation will probably get to do.
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Negotiating climate finance plan
Meanwhile, in the delegation offices and vast plenary halls, the seemingly insurmountable task of negotiating a new climate finance mechanism begins in earnest.
Without it, the Paris Agreement is in grave peril.
The convention requires some kind of credible package to be agreed by the end of these talks. It’s unimaginable it will be the $1.3trn that is accepted as necessary.
But if there’s not a path to that number, based on hundreds of billions of commitments from a mixture of public and private sources, COP29 will end in failure.
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