As COP29 opens in Azerbaijan, the climate summit spotlights a series of contradictions that paint a picture more of hypocrisy than of hope. In his keynote, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev dismissed Western criticisms of his country’s oil reliance as “slander and blackmail.” His stance underscores the global paradox—leaders encourage a green transition but often default to fossil fuels, not least in resource-rich nations.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres followed Aliyev’s speech with a stark call-out: doubling down on fossil fuels, he argued, is an “absurd” strategy. Yet Guterres’s critique applies globally, not least to Canada, where green rhetoric runs headlong into the hard numbers: in 2023 alone, Ottawa shelled out over $18.6 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels, including billions for the Trans Mountain pipeline, financing for exports, and carbon capture ventures. Canada might fancy itself a climate champion, but it remains deeply invested in its petrostate reality.

Meanwhile, COP29’s developing-world attendees are justified in their frustration. They’ve been promised that wealthy countries would mobilize $100 billion annually since 2009 for climate adaptation. That goal, missed for years and only achieved in 2022, barely scratches the surface of what’s needed. It’s telling that even the Taliban—a group not often linked to environmental progress—arrived at COP29, urging wealthy nations to compensate for a crisis they “created.” That irony is rich, as is the uneasy spectacle of the world’s most powerful nations discussing climate finance in the luxurious halls of Baku.

But the circus hardly ends there. Despite promises of "sacrifice for the planet," leaders in wealthier nations backslide when convenient—case in point, Justin Trudeau’s carve-out for home heating oil subsidies to placate Atlantic Canadian voters. As developing nations and vulnerable communities around the world brace for more severe climate impacts, it’s hard not to question whether the COP model, given its current direction, serves the world’s climate needs or is just window-dressing for yet another round of political expediency.

With the return of a climate-skeptic U.S. administration and high-profile absences from global leaders, COP29 feels more like a fractious forum for unmet promises and entrenched interests than the decisive moment we need. The stakes for climate action have never been higher, but with fossil fuel subsidies unabated and key leaders disengaged, the question lingers: can this COP deliver anything more than lip service to a rapidly worsening crisis?