Since arriving here at COP29, I’ve been thinking about the different reasons people come to this global stage.

There are delegations like ours that are justice-centered protesting, advocating, and uninvolved in direct policy negotiations. Some attend to network and shine a good light on their organization, without calling for much change, and then others come to explicitly further the interests of big oil. Corporations and government representatives give out free swag in one part of the conference while negotiating wonky policy in closed-door meetings. You can see these different segments of the conference very clearly, but what you can’t see as clearly is the way power weaves through it all, ever-present and dominating.

I’ve been inspired by my conversations with Indigenous climate leaders speaking truth to power, local educators finding sparks of connection, climate activists disrupting this conference to shed light on the genocide in Gaza, and panels that are challenging attendees to envision a just and adaptive future on a local level, all while national and international leaders refuse to step up and commit to substantive and necessary change.

Today I felt great discomfort and frustration bumping shoulders with greenwashers, oil lobbyists, and government officials from around the world who are spending millions on COP with two goals in mind: to lobby behind closed doors for inaction and inequity, and to craft a positive image of themselves to the climate world while they do it.

COP29 is a test to see if developed countries want a livable world by actually backing climate policies. Without finance, talk about climate action isn’t action. It’s just talk.

In college, I was in the Model United Nations club. I would attend conferences where college students in suits would animatedly debate complex international policies, which often took more than a month to study for. I’ll tell you a secret, though — the people who won the conferences weren’t playing a game that was about how well you understood the subject, but how much power you could build by manipulating the narrative or camouflaging distasteful details. It was never about the truth of the subjects we debated, but the power one could cultivate. Power came to those who knew the right maneuvering tactics, not those who knew the details of policy.

I’ve increasingly learned that Model UN is a scarily accurate microcosm of contemporary international politics. Rich countries are not taking the climate finance issue seriously. Instead of being willing to put forward the trillions of dollars needed in grant-based finance, they refuse to even approach the dollar amount needed, and claim that loans and private finance could fill the gap. Loans worsen the climate crisis, because countries prioritize debt repayment over climate action, and are pushed to pay back their debt by expanding fossil fuel exports. In short, developed nations and the slew of international corporations who attend COP are trying to turn the climate crisis into an investment opportunity for themselves.

Tonight as I walked out of the COP29 conference center, Grace Malie, Rising Nations Youth Delegate from Tuvalu’s words rang in my head:

“How many more COPs will it take to see an actual impact in my community? It’s all talk, and no action.”

Learn more about Grace here.

Zoe is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

Zoe Redfern-Hall is the Senior Communications and Marketing Manager at Climate Generation and YEA! Alumni. She graduated from Clark University in 2021 with a degree in Political Science. Upon returning home to Minnesota, she became deeply involved with organizing against the Line 3 oil pipeline. Last year, more than 2,000 oil lobbyists were allowed to attend COP, impacting the negotiations, stories, and transparency of the conference. She is excited and honored to join the Climate Generation delegation of climate leaders, educators, and activists calling for real change and ambition for a just cultural, economic, and energy transition away from fossil fuels.

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How Many More COPs Will It Take?