The Saudis own entire economies. They aren't even listed on the world's richest people because they own the mechanism that those people operate in.

They'll just start funding more terrorist organizations and attacks à la 9/11. The Saudis are no one's friends and the world would do well to remember that.

They produce a lot of oil, they can easily influence oil prices, and thereby influence elections.

Piss off the Saudis, they reduce output, prices go up, idiots everywhere vote for the other guy who's willing to suck their dick.

Eg. 2022 US midterms they used oil as a weapon against the democrats, losing them the house.

money?

The rules on the talks require consensus, and the president of the talks is an oil executive from another petrostate and likely to interpret a requirement for consensus as a requirement for unanimity

You're right about their motivations, but I think geopolitics gives absolutely zero shits about Mecca. Just like with Israel, religion is sometimes used as rhetorical justification, but ultimately it's about power. Invoking religion is another political move as a shield against their cynicism.

Like just look at how these sentiments tend go: "we are fighting for our holy land because we are righteous; they are fighting over their holy land because they are simpleminded and superstitious". It's just flag waving. It's such easily manipulated rhetoric that it can work to any end, so of course it gets deployed.

It's no more meaningful to the people in power than any other culture war issue. They care about it exactly as much as they care about the green M&M.

Edit: I mentioned Israel, and I realise a lot of people still don't understand this, but when the US invokes religious duty as their reasons for supporting Israel, it's cynical. Biden made the real reason abundantly clear decades ago, and he has not walked this back: https://youtube.com/shorts/2HZs-v0PR44?si=vBjdkrzWB5xAWJ7u

He literally says it's about "values", then immediately says they'd have to invent an Israel. He made it clear decades ago that was purely for US geopolitics.

Saudi Arabia is taking the fall for the other oil-producing nations (or the corporations that own those nations), allowing them all to ignore climate change entirely. This way they can all point to Saudi Arabia and say, "Blame them, not us! We did everything we could, but Saudi Arabia just wouldn't let us come to an agreement. Oh, well. Too bad. Maybe next time."

COP28 is a fake climate conference led by oil billionaires and fossil fuel execs. Their only goal is to exert control on the global messaging around climate change. They will never agree to meaningful change. We need to be calling it out as the charade it is and demand a legitimate conference that excludes fossil fuel execs and billionaires entirely. There is no "self-regulation". They need to be regulated by force of laws, not empty promises and fake climate summits.

For as long as the rest of the world is subsidizing their public works

They don't need to insulate the population, just the ruling house and the oil sector. The rest of the country is basically disposable, that's the nature of the resource curse.