Earth’s biggest polluters aren’t sending leaders to UN climate talks in a year of weather extremes

World leaders converged Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference with plenty of big names and powerful countries noticeably absent.

Past talks often had the star power of a soccer World Cup. But the meeting just getting underway in Azerbaijan won’t have the top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries — a group responsible for more than 70% of the heat-trapping gases emitted last year.

“The people who are responsible for this are absent,” Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said during his speech at the summit. “There’s nothing to be proud about.”

The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — aren’t sending their No. 1s. Neither are India and Indonesia. That’s the world’s four most populous nations, with more than 42% of all the world’s people.

“It’s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There’s no sense of urgency,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. He said this explains “the absolute mess we’re finding ourselves in.”