This year's U.N. climate summit delivered a deal on climate finance two days past deadline, after two weeks of tense negotiations. The summit's main agenda item - setting a new annual target for global climate finance - had nations wrangling for two weeks.

Baku, Azerbaijan —Azerbaijan is the land of fire, or so the Zoroastrian legend goes. Its supply of combustible fuel has long bound this story to Azerbaijan’s reality. One of its natural wonders is a “burning mountain,” Yanar Dagh, which blazes continuously from hydrocarbon gases venting from inside the earth.

The country’s authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev personally oversees the largest cash cow: the State Oil Fund. That may be why he considers Azerbaijan’s vast reserve of fossil fuels “ a gift from God ” even as it fails to uplift his people.