BAKU, Azerbaijan — It was the most trumpeted achievement of last year’s climate conference. One year later, it’s nowhere to be found.
The call to “transition away” from coal, oil and gas that came out of December’s COP28 summit in Dubai was historic — the first time 200 countries, including major oil and gas producers such as Saudi Arabia and the United States, had explicitly agreed on the need to wind down fossil fuels.
But in Baku, Azerbaijan, COP29 is taking place after a U.S. election that handed the presidency back to Donald Trump, who has vowed to massively expand oil and gas production. And the host country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, used his keynote address to call fossil fuel resources a “gift of the God.”
Against that backdrop, even getting this summit to reiterate last year’s nonbinding agreement has faced “pushback,” Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s climate minister, told reporters on Thursday. And some advocates for strong climate action appeared to be accepting defeat.
