World lead­ers are con­verg­ing Tues­day at the Unit­ed Na­tions an­nu­al cli­mate con­fer­ence in Baku, Azer­bai­jan al­though the big names and pow­er­ful coun­tries are no­tice­ably ab­sent, un­like past cli­mate talks which had the star pow­er of a soc­cer World Cup.

But 2024’s COP29 cli­mate talks are more like the In­ter­na­tion­al Chess Fed­er­a­tion world cham­pi­onship, lack­ing the rec­og­niz­able names but big on nerd pow­er and strat­e­gy. The top lead­ers of the 13 largest car­bon diox­ide-pol­lut­ing coun­tries will not ap­pear. Their na­tions are re­spon­si­ble for more than 70% of 2023’s heat-trap­ping gas­es.

“The peo­ple who are re­spon­si­ble for this are ab­sent,” said Be­larus Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko dur­ing his speech at the sum­mit. “How ef­fec­tive are our ac­tions at this meet­ing, when the Pres­i­dent of France, which was the coun­try which was re­spon­si­ble for the Paris is not even here, feels it’s not rel­e­vant? There’s noth­ing to be proud about.”

By  SETH BOREN­STEIN, MELI­NA WALLING and SIBI ARA­SU

BAKU, Azer­bai­jan (AP)