By Necia Quast, LWV of the San Juans

I had the chance to be one of two in-person official observers for the League of Women Voters of the US at 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbajan in November 2024. The other observer covered the first week of the COP and I covered the second.

My brief was to report back on whatever I found interesting. I decided there was no point in watching the negotiations; journalists, spokespersons, and observers gave regular readouts on the lack of progress. I attended panels on agriculture, on cities, sea ice and mountain glaciers, and on youth. I talked to a state representative from Yakima on a panel at the U.S pavilion about disaster preparedness. I went the pavilions of countries where I had lived and worked, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Bangladesh. I tracked down the observer from the Quaker UN Office and occasionally caught up and exchanged notes with a young doctor from Kenya who was seated next to me on my flight there. He worked in a refugee camp and was an observer for Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons.

I learned that petrostates, patriarchy and corporate interests sought to roll back previous commitments, especially to phase out fossil fuel use and obstructing stronger action. The UN acknowledged there were 1800 fuel industry lobbyists present. Many groups protested as this same cabal, host Azerbaijan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Vatican proposed to remove language about human rights and gender equality from climate agreements, now an annual battle.

I learned the climate impact on agriculture and food security is high with increasing droughts, fires, extreme heat, and floods. We are not hitting the targets to limit the temperature rise to 1.5C degrees and at 2C degrees 70% of food crops will not be viable where they grow now. Still agricultural innovation is moving fast with higher-yield drought resistant varieties, dry seeding rice that produces two crops, uses less water, and lowers emissions and nitrogen-fixing versions of maize, wheat and rice that are self-fertilizing.

With each recent years being the hottest on record and emissions still increasing, last year for the first time the carbon sinks—the ocean, forests, ecosystems that usually sequester some carbon, failed, emitting carbon equal to the amounts absorbed. Out of thirty some key eco-system, six are unstable and approaching tipping points where collapse would become irreversible-- polar ice, permafrost, glaciers, and the Atlantic circulation system, among them. Young people at the conference were especially frustrated at the lack of urgency.

Still there is positive news. With renewable energy now cheaper than fossil  fuels for producing electricity the market is doing more to phase out fossil fuels than official actions. The most important action is ultimately local and because that is where people experience the impact local government, especially cities. Nearly 11k cities have climate plans and more than 800 have committed to becoming Net Zero, with 75% of are reducing emissions faster than national targets. Whatever federal government does, U.S., states representing over half the U.S. population remain committed to climate action through the We’re Still In movement. The more steps we take as individuals, the more individual action becomes collective action.