From Baku we predicted that COP29 was a bust before it even convened and we were right. The reason is that the delegates, having given up on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases even before COP28 in Abu Dhabi, realized that in Azerbaijan the main order of business was giving up on the fallback of having rich countries give poor countries trillions of dollars to help the latter cope with all the terrible weather the former supposedly caused. Governments of poor countries quickly reached a historic landmark agreement on the need for them to get giant sacks of cash annually but the governments of rich countries failed to warm to the idea globally or otherwise. And so it ended with the usual extension past the formal deadline, this year by a gruelling 35 hours, to 5:31 AM Baku time on Sunday morning, sleep deprivation being a famously effective form of torture, the groggy delegates signing something unimportant that they couldn’t understand or refuse anyway, which “UN Climate Change News” predictably called “a breakthrough agreement.” But nobody was fooled. As Max Bearak wrote for the New York Times, “wealthy nations pledged to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, up from a current target of $100 billion.” Yeah. Sure. Ten years from now, under different administrations, unless they don’t. No sooner had the gavel descended, and you can watch the agonizing finale here, than India’s chief negotiator denounced the process as “stage managed”, called the amount agreed to “a paltry sum,” added “I am sorry to say that we cannot accept it.” and called the deal “nothing more than an optical illusion.” So a promise too costly to pay is too paltry to accept. As we predicted.

That Times piece kept on desperately playing the same old tune:

“Independent experts, however, have placed the needs of developing countries much higher, at $1.3 trillion per year. That is the amount they say must be invested in the energy transitions of lower-income countries, in addition to what those countries already spend, to keep the planet’s average temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, global warming will become more dangerous and harder to reverse.”

So experts say. But if so, the battle is lost because these conferences cannot generate anything but empty words and it’s very hard to ignore at this point.

Not that they didn’t try. The UN’s Secretary General and climate Ranter-in-Chief António Guterres issued a press release that tried to have it both ways:

“An agreement at COP29 was absolutely essential to keep the 1.5 degree limit alive. And countries have delivered. I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome – on both finance and mitigation – to meet the great challenge we face. But this agreement provides a base on which to build.”

A base on which to build? Twenty-nine years in and that’s as far as you’ve gotten? Naturally he also claimed:

“COP29 comes at the close of a brutal year – a year seared by record temperatures, and scarred by climate disaster, all as emissions continue to rise. Finance has been priority number one. Developing countries swamped by debt, pummelled by disasters, and left behind in the renewables revolution, are in desperate need of funds.”

Let them eat promises.

The full flavour of the slow-motion wreck is captured by a Climate Home News “COP29 Bulletin Day 11: New text floats $250bn core goal for climate finance” that met with fury and derision:

“‘It is [a] joke,’ said African Group finance negotiator Alpha Kaloga in a post on X. ‘BAD DEAL,’ he added. His words come hours after campaigners held a press conference to say no deal on finance was better than a bad deal.”

Now Alpha Kaloga is of course a well-compensated inhabitant of the galactic metropolis, belonging to a group funded by… what’s this?... the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which arguably knows little about either, so he’s not exactly innocent in this mess. Who failed to see it coming, months ago. Notwithstanding his protest they ended up taking a bad deal because the alternative was no deal and, very possibly, no process to manufacture more optical illusions year on year. But he had a point.

There are over 200 countries in the world, most of them appallingly poor and misgoverned. Divvying up $250 billion a year won’t even make it worth skimming off in most of them at under $2 billion each. It certainly won’t stop storms or pay for much cleanup even if, as Bjorn Lomborg pointedly wrote during the first week of COP29, “Even if the money could be mustered, it is highly doubtful the trillions will go to the poor instead of pompous vanity projects or Swiss bank accounts.”

Lomborg, something of a lukewarmer on climate while being an incisive commentator, started by stating the obvious, or at any rate the should-have-been-obvious:

“The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan, taking place from Nov. 11-22, is happening in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election, and many key leaders won’t even show up. With low expectations set before it even began, the summit will nonetheless see grandiose speeches on the need for a vast flow of money from rich countries to poorer ones. Unrealistic even before Trump’s victory, such calls for trillions of dollars are misguided and sure to fail.”

It wasn’t exactly a state secret:

“The main problem is that wealthy countries – responsible for most emissions leading to climate change – want to cut emissions while poorer countries mainly want to eradicate poverty through growth that remains largely reliant on fossil fuels. To get poorer countries to act against their own interest, the West started offering cash two decades ago.”

But cash for what? As he says, the money was often “mislabeled development aid” but over time it morphed into compensation for the supposed climate damage done by rich countries, though as he added:

“Factually, this is an ill-considered claim because weather damages from hurricanes, floods, droughts, and other weather calamities have actually declined as a percentage of global GDP since 1990, both for rich and poor countries. Deaths from these catastrophes have plummeted.”

However that things are factually ill-considered doesn’t matter much in the wacky world of climate alarmism. Nor, apparently, does the fact that they’re organizationally ill-considered, at least until it’s too late. Voters in rich countries weren’t going to stand for it, their politicians weren’t going to offer it, and so… they sleep-walked into a PR disaster any fool could have seen coming and we fools at CDN, at least, did see coming.

Even so it was somewhat sad to read these late-stages missives from climate alarmist groups and the rhetoric of the muckamucks who had spent the last year preparing for this gathering, including holding umpteen pre-gatherings, only to find that they’d forgotten to do their homework and now it was too late and there was no way to bluff.

With just two days to go, Climate Home News reported with bleak accuracy that:

“Developing countries have derided a rumoured $200-billion-a-year climate finance proposal while developed countries are still silent on what they are prepared to put on the table.”

Still silent. This conference has been planned not just for months but literally years, and everyone knew that this issue of ponying up a vast sum of cash to make up for being unable to stop GHG emissions was going to be central. And eight days in, no proposal and a risible rumour? We’d be in a heap of trouble if these people were in charge.

Oh wait. They are. And on it goes. On the second-last scheduled day, and it’s no time for such shenanigans, Climate Home News reported that:

“The penultimate official day of COP29 saw an early morning finance text and a marathon all-country meeting at which developed and developing nations agreed on little other than that the text doesn’t yet do enough to get them to a final deal. The 10-page text for the post-2025 climate finance goal (NCQG) outlines two very different wishlists. There is, as yet, no third compromise proposal. In the 3.5-hour plenary session, called a ‘qurultay’ in the local custom, New Zealand’s climate minister Simon Watts spoke for many when he said that ‘the NCQG text is simply not useful for reaching an agreement’ and it ‘reflects only two extreme outcomes that do not bring the parties in this room closer together’. Malawi’s Evans Njewa reminded the room that time is limited, as many of the delegates from his Least Developed Country group would be headed home on Saturday. Recent nature talks in Cali were suspended when it ran overtime and too many negotiators had to leave.”

Now getting in and out of Baku is somewhat tricky. So they managed to fake a deal in time to rush for Heydar Aliyev International Airport. But $300 billion in a decade from we know not who via we know not what, with no enforcement mechanism, is so embarrassing it’s hard to believe they didn’t come up with a better optical illusion.