Baku: A climate breakthrough looks depressingly bleak today

The success of fossil fuel-favouring politics threatens the planet

- David Fickling

Has there ever been a grimmer backdrop to the world's most concerted attempt to avert global warming? COP29, the annual conference for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is happening in Baku, Azerbaijan, one of the birthplaces of the modern oil industry and (according to civil liberties group Freedom House) among the most oppressive societies on the planet.

Leaders from China and the US, which account for about 45% of the world's carbon footprint, aren't attending—and US President Joe Biden is a 'lame duck' after the Republican Party's electoral sweep. Almost every other major economy in Asia and the Americas will be absent, thanks to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru this week, while the leaders of Germany, France and the EC are also staying home.

There have been other tough summits. COP28 in Abu Dhabi foreshadowed this year's event by resembling a trade fair for the oil industry. Still, it happened before the anti-climate wave seen in recent European and US elections. The 2009 event in Copenhagen collapsed in disarray, but 15 years ago the world had more wiggle room to avoid disaster. About a quarter of all emissions since 1850 have happened since Copenhagen. We've only got 7 years left of current-rate pollution to retain an even chance of keeping global warming below 1.5° Celsius.