Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 13, 2024
As the Climate Crisis Worsens, COP29 Feels Like a Show Without Substance
November 18, 2022
As COP29 opens in Azerbaijan, this year’s UN climate summit has quickly become less about hope and more about the world’s inability—or unwillingness—to unite on the climate crisis. The event has turned into a forum of empty promises and political theatrics, leaving little to encourage those looking for serious, concrete action. With catastrophic climate events mounting worldwide and the incoming U.S. administration preparing to withdraw from the Paris Accord, we are rapidly moving from a critical juncture to a dangerous decline in global climate cooperation.
The backdrop to COP29 is a world grappling with relentless climate disasters. In the U.S., North Carolina was battered by unprecedented flooding, while wildfires and smoke in California and New York have turned once-safe communities into danger zones. Across the Atlantic, Spain’s Valencia recently experienced its worst floods in modern history. Scientists warn that each year of inaction accelerates the damage, yet the atmosphere at COP29 is anything but urgent. This is underscored by the absence of major players. President Joe Biden skipped the conference altogether following Trump’s election victory, while China sent only a deputy and the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen stayed away entirely.
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Without the presence of such key world leaders, the climate talks risk becoming what frustrated observers see as little more than a stage for empty rhetoric. That’s further compounded by the rhetoric from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who used his keynote to lambast Western critics of his country’s oil industry rather than championing true climate action. His speech, coupled with remarks from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the absurdity of doubling down on fossil fuels, shows the fractured reality: a tug-of-war between national interests and the well-being of the planet.
With climate finance taking centre stage, wealthy nations are once again being called to pay a fair share. For more than a decade, these countries have promised, and often failed, to mobilize $100 billion per year to support developing nations in mitigating climate impacts and shifting to cleaner energy. Canada, for instance, increased its pledge to $5.3 billion over five years, a figure that many argue is far too modest for the nation’s historical emissions contribution. Even with some countries pushing for increased commitments, the existing funding falls drastically short of the UN’s estimated need of $1.46 trillion annually by 2030—a figure that dwarfs current pledges and feels insurmountable given the economic and political landscapes.
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Reader responses capture the growing discontent: many Canadians feel their tax dollars are being wasted on foreign climate pledges while fossil fuel subsidies at home keep the industry alive and well. Despite climate commitments, Canada continues to hand billions in subsidies to oil and gas sectors, mirroring a broader global hypocrisy. Meanwhile, developing nations who suffer the harshest climate impacts are left struggling to access funds while shouldering mounting debts.
Casting a dark shadow over COP29 is the election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accord for the second time. This move threatens to destabilize any fragile climate consensus and will make America, the world’s largest historic carbon emitter, a climate rogue. With the U.S. pivoting away from international climate commitments, other nations may follow suit, leaving the Paris Accord toothless. Trump’s resurgence has emboldened climate denial and encouraged other fossil fuel interests, making it seem as though the world is stepping backward just as the effects of climate change become impossible to ignore.
One of the most damning aspects of the climate negotiations is the dual-track approach to funding. On one hand, wealthy nations direct money to initiatives like the Green Climate Fund, which funds renewable energy projects in low-income countries. On the other, these same countries funnel billions into fossil fuel subsidies to maintain their own energy security and economy. This two-faced approach not only undercuts climate finance but undermines the entire notion of a “green transition.” These contradictions leave everyday people wondering if the “green” in “green transition” refers more to money than to true environmental commitment.
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Adding insult to injury, many climate finance contributions come as loans rather than grants, which traps poorer countries in debt rather than giving them the tools to build strong, independent green economies. Despite Canada’s pledge to move toward a 50-50 split between grants and loans, this ratio falls far short of the 60-40 split advocated by environmental groups. For small island nations and low-income countries already crippled by climate impacts, these loans feel like a betrayal.
The tragedy of COP29 is not just that it’s failing to deliver, but that it risks becoming irrelevant. With other global priorities—security, economic inflation, geopolitical conflicts—taking precedence, the climate crisis is slipping down the agenda for the countries most responsible for the damage. If wealthy nations remain unwilling to either act at home or support vulnerable nations abroad, the question will become not how we stop the climate crisis, but how we survive it.
July 30, 2024
The reality is bleak. In a world where wealthy nations hedge their bets on fossil fuel stability while paying lip service to climate goals, climate summits like COP29 become pageants of performative diplomacy rather than engines of change. The urgency of the climate crisis demands more than grandstanding; it requires coordinated global sacrifice and an unwavering commitment to real, painful change. Until world leaders confront their own contradictions and take true responsibility, every COP will be a hollow gathering of bluster, hypocrisy, and lost opportunity.
It’s time for action, not theatrics. We may not get another chance.
As COP29 opens in Azerbaijan, the climate summit spotlights a series of contradictions that paint a picture more of hypocrisy than of hope. In his keynote, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev dismissed Western criticisms of his country’s oil reliance as “slander and blackmail.” His stance underscores the global paradox—leaders encourage a green transition but often default to fossil fuels, not least in resource-rich nations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres followed Aliyev’s speech with a stark call-out: doubling down on fossil fuels, he argued, is an “absurd” strategy. Yet Guterres’s critique applies globally, not least to Canada, where green rhetoric runs headlong into the hard numbers: in 2023 alone, Ottawa shelled out over $18.6 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels, including billions for the Trans Mountain pipeline, financing for exports, and carbon capture ventures. Canada might fancy itself a climate champion, but it remains deeply invested in its petrostate reality.
Meanwhile, COP29’s developing-world attendees are justified in their frustration. They’ve been promised that wealthy countries would mobilize $100 billion annually since 2009 for climate adaptation. That goal, missed for years and only achieved in 2022, barely scratches the surface of what’s needed. It’s telling that even the Taliban—a group not often linked to environmental progress—arrived at COP29, urging wealthy nations to compensate for a crisis they “created.” That irony is rich, as is the uneasy spectacle of the world’s most powerful nations discussing climate finance in the luxurious halls of Baku.
But the circus hardly ends there. Despite promises of “sacrifice for the planet,” leaders in wealthier nations backslide when convenient—case in point, Justin Trudeau’s carve-out for home heating oil subsidies to placate Atlantic Canadian voters. As developing nations and vulnerable communities around the world brace for more severe climate impacts, it’s hard not to question whether the COP model, given its current direction, serves the world’s climate needs or is just window-dressing for yet another round of political expediency.
With the return of a climate-skeptic U.S. administration and high-profile absences from global leaders, COP29 feels more like a fractious forum for unmet promises and entrenched interests than the decisive moment we need. The stakes for climate action have never been higher, but with fossil fuel subsidies unabated and key leaders disengaged, the question lingers: can this COP deliver anything more than lip service to a rapidly worsening crisis?
– The Graeme Gallery
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