The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, testified at COP29 about the deadly impact of the climate crisis on people’s lives. Sánchez took advantage of his intervention at the plenary session of the Baku Climate Conference to “warn against a terrible truth that science has been highlighting for too long and that, despite this, some continue to despise: climate change kills” . And he recalled that the climate crisis “has just contributed to the death of more than 220 of my compatriots in Spain” in reference to the victims of the floods caused by the recent DANA.
Sánchez insisted that “there is only one thing as important as helping the victims of this misfortune in Valencia, and that is to prevent this from happening again.” “If we do not act, our countries will suffer,” he continued. “This is an existential threat that many governments are reluctant to confront. They brake when they need to accelerate. Going back to oil or combustion cars knowing that this formula will lead us to disaster.
The Director-General concluded by declaring: “As one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, I want to say that we are taking action. Let’s stop dragging our feet. Let’s save lives, save economies and save the planet. »
The countdown and absences
Before Sánchez’s words, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke before the plenary session of the summit to recall that “the ticking” of a “countdown that has already begun to limit the ‘global temperature increase to 1.5ºC’. And then he gave what he called a “master class in climate destruction.” Among the extreme events, he cited “the thousands of pilgrims killed by unbearable heat” or, precisely, “the floods which are tearing apart populations and destroying infrastructure”. “All of these disasters are fueled by human-caused climate change. “No country is saved.”
Also at the inauguration, the president of host Azerbaijan, Ilhan Aliyev, repeated his mantra that “oil and gas are a gift from God” and that countries “should not be blamed for possessing them and bring them to market because “the market needs them.” He then criticized Western countries for the “hypocrisy” of buying their countries’ gas and then lecturing them.
Some personalities did not attend the series of high-level political interventions during this COP. For example, Chinese President Xi Jinping – although he does not usually attend these meetings in person – or Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – who spoke a year ago.
Oil and gas are a gift from God and countries should not be blamed for owning and trading them because the market needs them.
Ilham Aliyev
— President of Azerbaijan
Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi – present at the Dubai summit in 2023 – has not approached Baku either. Among this group of major polluters, US President Joe Biden stayed home. The voice of French President Emmanuel Macron or German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has not been heard.
The fact that these heads of state or government did not visit Azerbaijan does not mean that their countries are exempt from the COP. In fact, the Chinese and American delegations continue to have great leverage in these negotiations. Another thing is that, in the case of the United States, the current envoys are leaving before the arrival of the new President Donald Trump.
In this sense, we have just learned that Trump will place a former member of Congress named Lee Zeldin at the head of the Environmental Protection Agency with the mission of “ensuring fair and rapid deregulation” in this area. Trump brought back the Republican Party’s old pro-oil slogan from 2008, baby drill drill –baby drill–. He also chose Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the UN (the forum where climate summits take place), which fueled the hoax against Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that “he failed to condemn the terrorists of the Hamas for their barbaric and horrific atrocities.” .”
