The UN climate conference ended with a $300 billion a year pledge — disappointing many

COP29 — the annual United Nations climate summit — came to a close at the end of last week in Baku, Azerbaijan. The country’s president called oil and gas a “gift from God” during the conference. This was the third year in a row that an oil exporter hosted a COP meeting, after Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

By the end, developed countries agreed to commit $300 billion a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change — starting a decade from now. It’s three times more than the previous agreement. But it’s less than a quarter of what experts say the world needs.

Developing countries and their advocates wanted to see a $1.3 trillion per year commitment. American University environment professor Dana Fisher called this year’s conference a carbon-infused nothingburger.

“Anybody who expected this 29th round of climate negotiations in a petrostate theoretically to stop the climate crisis was fooling themselves,” she said.

And, Fisher said, it’s not like there’s an agreed-upon punishment if countries don’t fork over their share of that money. “It’s green smoke and mirrors. I mean, it’s just performative climate action at this point,” she said.

President-elect Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement during his first administration, and he has promised to reverse President Joe Biden’s decision to recommit to the treaty. But Daniel Bresette, president of the climate nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study Institute, went to the conference and didn’t come away too worried.

“The rest of the world has kind of been to this rodeo before and has found ways to cope,” he said.

Plus, just because the U.S. federal government pulls out doesn’t mean the whole country has to.

“One thing that was hard to miss was the, sort of, the state and local government — the U.S. subnational message was, ‘We’re still in,'” he said.

Bresette added that much of the corporate and private sector is still in too.

There’s nothing legally binding about the $300 billion deal, said Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president of international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

But “there are political and moral repercussions,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that they will deliver against that.”

Guilanpour was also at the conference, where, he said, COP leaders produced a blueprint for their next meeting. “Which is essentially tasked with getting the incoming COP30 presidency of Brazil to think about how you do move from these billions to the wider trillion,” he said.

Meaning that annual $1.3 trillion target is still on the table for next year’s conference in Belém, Brazil.