It was 8am in Baku, Azerbaijan when I woke up for the first day of COP29 still feeling the 10 hour time difference of my homelands in my bones.
The sun shone so beautifully through the kitchen window while I prepared myself some breakfast and it was the first time I really appreciated the cityscape view that I have come to love greeting every morning. I even enjoyed the gentle hum of the many parked and idling COP29 branded shuttle buses that wait outside of the hotel to bring COP29 participants to the Baku Olympic Stadium, where the event is being hosted.
After breakfast I took the elevator down to the lobby, exited the building, and hopped onto the first bus in line after showing the driver my COP29 badge. I sat down on the empty bus and then the driver began their route through the city. The bus made 2 additional stops at official COP29 transit hubs, filling the shuttle with eager COP29 participants, before heading straight for our destination.
Growing up in Minneapolis, my mother and I took the bus everywhere. We did not have access to a car until I was in middle school so taking the bus was not a choice but a necessity derived from poverty. This necessity continued through most of my 20s, as a single mother on welfare myself, while I was working towards a degree in chemistry. Now, as a financially stable adult who owns 2 vehicles and has the privilege of choice, I still tend to prefer public transit whenever possible as it is a sunk-cost in terms of carbon and VOC emissions. My point is — I am familiar with the bus and general bus etiquette.
As I sat on the bus, watching the bustle of Baku from my window seat, I was excited to feel surrounded by like-minded professionals and activists engaged in the climate change mitigation space and was looking forward to the sessions I planned to attend that day. However, I was removed from my daydreaming when I felt the pain of a hair being plucked from my head. The man sitting behind me kept putting his hands on the back of my seat with no consideration for my hair, which was simply existing. I tried shifting and moving my hair, but over the course of the bus ride his hands painfully removed at least five hairs from my head before I had had enough and switched seats.
At some point, the bus gave a slight jolt and a man near me gave a shout of frustration. He had hurt his knees on the seat in front of him when the bus jolted forwards and back again. The man mumbled under his breath and gave a long stern stare at the driver while shaking his head, visually communicating his upset with the driver’s performance. While I felt badly for the hurt the man complained about, I felt he was being overly rude to the driver who drove in a very expected and safe way.
Shortly after the jolt incident, another man began complaining very loudly about the temperature on the bus which, like the jolt, was not unusual or extreme. He told the other passengers near him that ‘somebody ought to tell the driver that we are too hot!’. To no one’s surprise, no one took up his cause. After about 10 minutes of complaints he finally took matters into his own hands and told the driver, in Russian, that the bus was too hot. The driver did not understand him and I thought how odd it was that he assumed the Azerbaijani driver spoke Russian. While some people do, it still seemed a bizarre assumption to make. Once the man was back to his seat, defeated in his task, he told his seatmate that he studied Russian in school and was excited to use it. While I will not say which school he went to, I assure that it has a reputation for educating some of the world’s wealthiest children. It is of note that the man at no point chose to remove the coat he was wearing.
It was at that moment that I realized: I do not think many of the people on this shuttle have much experience in utilizing public transportation in an urban setting. I was on the struggle bus with folks who seemed unaware of how obvious their lack of lived experience was in this context.
The struggle bus did not let me off when I walked off of the COP29 shuttle. Almost every session, negotiation and presentation I attended that day was a harsh reminder that those in positions of power, with the authority to make lasting impacts on international climate policy, do not live the realities of the climate crisis.
They do not ride the bus to work and therefore do not recognize the needs of the folks who do.
I attended over six sessions on my first day with topics ranging from Article 6, international cooperation, blue carbon, integrating science and nature, responsible mineral mining, etc. All of the speakers and presenters spent considerable time advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous peoples voices, traditional, land-based pedagogy and representation, but none of them included Indigenous people themselves or a methodology to meaningfully incorporate us in the future. At one such discussion a representative from the United States made claims that the U.S. strives to include Indigenous folks at the decision making table but gave no details, tribal names or method descriptions as to how that work was being done. Are we to simply trust the words and promises of those who represent power structures that have subjected Native folks to forced poverty, genocide and cultural persecution for centuries?
On my second day at COP29 I heard teachings from Indigenous women representatives from Tuvalu, Torres Strait, and Aotearoa. Tiana Jakevich of Aotearoa shared some words from their elders which translated from their language to mean:
Indigenous people are of the land. We are of the rivers. Indigenous people are the physical manifestation of the Earth trying to protect itself.
Grace Malie of Tuvalu tearfully recalled visiting places from her childhood to find they are no longer there due to rising waters caused by climate change. She is just 25 years old. The climate crisis is occurring on a tangible timescale which is now altering how Indigenous peoples are able to pass down their teachings. Teachings which career climate change professionals claim they need. But if decision makers do not feel the urgent impacts themselves, can we trust them to act urgently? If they do not ride the struggle bus with us, or at least listen to us, can their vision of sustainability truly support and represent us?
Antavia 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.
Antavia descends from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and grew up in South Minneapolis. She earned her associates degree at Minneapolis College as a Power of You scholar and continued her studies in chemistry at Metro State University as an Increasing Diversity in Environmental Careers Fellow, as well as abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico as a Gilman International Scholar. Antavia has been a PhD student of chemistry at the University of Minnesota where she helped teach undergraduate analytical chemistry labs and spent time researching and synthesizing porous nanoparticles for PFAS phytoremediation as a 3M Science and Technology Fellow. In her work she develops and implements a STEM curriculum that honors and supports Indigenous ways of knowing and cultural protocol for Native American high school students in South Minneapolis. Her work in STEM educational equity has been shown to increase science interest and engagement for Indigenous girls in particular.
The post Who Gets a Seat on the Struggle Bus? appeared first on Climate Generation.
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.