Climate agreement reached on financial aid for developing countries amid skepticism from both sides

The COP29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, ended Saturday after two weeks of bitter division, with a pledge from countries considered wealthy pledging to provide $300 billion a year by 2035 to poorer countries to help them deal with the supposed impacts of climate change and to move their economies toward clean energy.

COP stands for “Conference of the Parties,” which are the nearly 200 countries that have ratified a treaty called the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). It was signed back in 1992, according to the BBC.

Finally, at 2:40 a.m. local time on Sunday, more than 30 hours past the deadline to reach an agreement, “the gavel finally went down on the agreement between nearly 200 countries,” according to CNN.

“People doubted that Azerbaijan could deliver. They doubted that everyone could agree. They were wrong on both,” said Mukhtar Babayev, the president of COP29 who is the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources and who has held various positions in the Azerbaijani state-oil company. 

The conference opened on November 12 with the president of the host country, Ilham Aliyev, criticizing "Western fake news" about the country's emissions and said nations "should not be blamed" for their fossil fuel reserves. He said that oil and gas are a “gift of God,” according to the BBC. 

India’s representative to COP, Chandni Raina, blasted the $300 billion as “abysmally poor” and a “paltry sum.” She was among those who wanted the figure to be $1.3 trillion a year instead of $300 billion. She said the agreement reached was “nothing more than an optical illusion” and unable to “address the enormity of the challenge we all face.” 

Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) attended the annual conference, as it normally does. CFACT, an American organization, “was founded to promote a much-needed, positive alternative voice on issues of environment and development.” In other words, they are clearly skeptics of the goals and purpose of COP29 and the alarmism over the theory and science behind man-made climate change. 

Craig Rucker of CFACT points out what some would call inconvenient truths, such as that “Nations such as China and India are given a pass on emissions reductions and paying out funds. This, despite the fact that China is the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gases and boasts the second largest economy, while India’s economy is all the way up at number five.”

He also points out that if United Nations goals are met, total annual global climate spending will climb from its current $3 trillion a year to $5 trillion a year by 2050. 

While most attendees of the conference recognize that when President-elect Trump takes office in January, the U.S. will likely once again withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and cut off U.S. funding to the COP29 agenda. 

“Let’s hope President Trump resurrects climate and energy reality for the U.S. and the world before much more damage is done,” Rucker concludes.