The effects of climate change have come crashing into our living rooms in the 2020s. No country has been spared the accelerating severe impacts. But so far, multilateral processes have failed to roll back CO2 emissions in any significant way.
Listen to this article 8 min Listen to this article 8 min The Conference of the Parties (COP29) gets under way this week in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan - a petro-state - within a very difficult international context.
There are two major wars, in Gaza and Ukraine, and the politics of the Western world has swung decidedly rightwards so that this COP was almost doomed from the beginning. The EU's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, is skipping the gathering, just like Netherlands Prime Minister Dick Schoof and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who recently fired his finance minister amid a budget crisis.
US President Joe Biden is in the lame-duck stage of his presidency. He will be replaced by climate sceptic Donald Trump who pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement the last time he was in the White House.
All indications are that Trump, who often led "drill, baby, drill" chants during his campaign rallies, will try to undo all or most of Joe Biden's climate policies.
The lack of interest from the media is not helping either. However, multilateral processes, however imperfect, must go on. What is at stake?
COP29 - the priorities
The key...
