Officials from about 190 nations are staying at five-star hotels this week in Doha, capital city of the tiny Arab state of Qatar, which pokes like a thumb from its border with Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf. The bigwigs are attending the 18th United Nations Conference on Climate Change in the ultra-extravagant Qatar National Conference Centre. Good choice: Qatar has the highest carbon emissions per capita on Earth.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the agenda in Doha — in addition to the usual items, like stopping hydrocarbon use, transfering wealth, regulating economic growth and controlling people’s lives — is to bring about “a complete economic transformation of the world.”