George A. Elmaraghy spent most of his career in state government, serving among other roles as chief of the surface water division of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The United Nation’s 29th Conference of the Parties annual climate summit in Azerbaijan started on Nov. 11 and ended on Nov. 24. More than 65,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries registered to attend this summit. This summit came at a time when we can feel the impact of climate change in form of severe weather across the whole world and an increase in resistance to implementing some climate control measures. This annual summit is always surreal. COP29 was no exception. It began with a speech by the Azerbaijani president declaring that fossil fuels are “a gift from God.” The U.S. election results dominated the conversations. France’s Environment Minister refused to attend the summit, and Argentine delegates returned home in the first week. It was not a surprise that no one left this conference happy. The major issue that dominated this summit were demands by developing countries that developed countries raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually to pay for their past climate sins and to finance their climate control and mitigation efforts. These efforts fell short of their expectations. Also, notably the conference failed to emphasize the need to reduce greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels. The summit ended with a nonbinding payment agreement that was cheered by the United States and European countries, to raise $300 billion annually and to transfer this money to finance climate projects in developing countries. This amount is far short of the $1.3 trillion demanded by the developing countries. The conference also failed to convince the rich so-called developing countries such as China and Saudi Arabia to contribute any of their money to this payment transfer […]