Intensified national rivalries and conflicts spreading around the world overshadowed the 29th United Nations climate conference, COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 11-24. The annual summit — where prominent capitalist figures burnish their green credentials — was marked by the absence of government heads from Washington, Beijing and elsewhere.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken Europe and beyond in the largest war on the continent since World War II. Conflicts are spreading in the Middle East in the wake of the Tehran-backed Hamas pogrom against Jews in Israel Oct. 7, 2023. Washington and rival capitalist powers are moving to rearm and shift alliances to defend their economic and political interests in future wars.
Alongside these conflicts, heightened competition for markets and resources are pulling apart the imperialist world order and shaking every multilateral pact and institution — whether for political, military, trade or “climate” arrangements.
President Joseph Biden attended the annual summit in 2021 and 2022 and Vice President Kamala Harris did so in 2023. Neither were present this year.
Commentators in the liberal media complained the potential of the gathering was spoiled by the election of Donald Trump days beforehand. Trump has pledged to pull Washington out of the Paris climate accords, as he did in his first term. After Biden took office in 2021, his administration rejoined the pact. It involves nearly 200 governments who set nonbinding goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Releases of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases add to the gradual warming of the Earth’s atmosphere along with natural variations in the planet’s climate.
In 2021 Washington and rival capitalist powers set a target of halving these emissions by the end of the decade. But emissions have continued to grow by 1% to 2% per year, confirming that this “goal” was always a fantasy.
Every capitalist power, whatever the character of its government, puts protection of the profit-driven interests of its own ruling families ahead of all other considerations. These capitalist classes have no concern for the social consequences of their rapacious exploitation of land and labor, nor their depletion of resources or deadly contamination of the earth, sea and air. This is exacerbated by today’s wars and sharp trade conflicts.
‘A chaotic, bitter summit’
COP29 was “a chaotic, bitter summit,” liberal outlet CNN complained. “Many wealthy country leaders failed to show up, Argentina pulled out its negotiators, and some developing country groups grew so frustrated in the final throes of talks, they walked out.”
The extravagant gathering drew thousands of officials from some 200 countries. As with previous summits, it was accompanied by predictions of imminent catastrophe from bourgeois political figures and the middle-class left, much amplified by Trump’s election.
“Time is not on our side,” forewarned U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutteres Nov. 12, before complaining that 2024 had been a “climate disaster.” Humanity faces “ecocide” and a “climate collapse,” cautioned prominent “climate activist” Greta Thunberg.
After extended talks, the meeting adopted a target of raising $300 billion a year by 2035 from more developed capitalist powers, supposedly to help undeveloped nations acquire renewable energy sources. The goal was only a fraction of the $1.3 trillion demanded by representatives from underdeveloped countries when the conference initially opened. The chief delegate from India condemned the final goal as “an optical illusion.”
The gathering was held in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, that relies on oil and gas for 90% of its exports. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, told the gathering that oil and gas were a “gift of God,” and countries “should not be blamed” for having them. His remarks ran head on against the stated aims of the summit organizers, which are to end the use of fossil fuels.
Moscow had used its “United Nations veto to prevent any European Union country from hosting” the summit, CNN reported.
Beijing-Washington rivalry
Over recent years, Beijing, a growing rival to Washington, has fought to lead in cornering the highly profitable market for renewable energy sources.
China’s rulers now dominate world manufacturing and exports of solar panels, huge wind turbines, batteries and electric cars. At the same time, the Chinese rulers still generate over half of their own power from coal. China is now the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Many capitalist governments, including the outgoing Biden administration, posture about ending the use of coal and oil without developing any realistic alternative. At the same time, they insist that hundreds of millions in semicolonial countries continue to live in wretched conditions without access to modern electricity in order to cut the use of fossil fuels.
No gathering of capitalist figures can offer a way forward to combat the rulers’ destruction of the environment.
The fight to safeguard the Earth’s resources is inseparable from union struggles to defend workers from bosses’ speedup and gutting of safety, and with the fight that’s needed to wrest control of production out of their hands. That requires bringing to power the working class and its exploited allies, whose labor, by working on what nature provides, produces all wealth.
Only then can capitalism’s despoliation of the environment, along with its oppression and wars, be ended, preserving the Earth’s patrimony for use by future generations.