At the third UN climate confab to be held in a petrostate, fact and fantasy collide

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan is so full of oil and gas that flames pour naturally out of rocks, prompting ancient residents to adopt Zoroastrianism (fire worship) and modern ones to adopt the name Azerbaijan, Land of Fire, in 1918.

In the 19th century, it was the first country in the world to extract oil and still has enough of it for people on the outskirts of the capital Baku to have (state-owned) oil pumps in their backyards.

Recently, following sanctions on Russia, it has become a major European gas supplier, and fossil fuels account for around 90% of the country’s exports.

All this makes Azerbaijan as unlikely a place to hold a conference on arresting climate change as petrostates Dubai and Egypt, which hosted the annual United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) confabs last year and the year before last.

Setting the tone of COP29, which kicked off on November 11 and will end on Friday, Azerbaijan’s autocratic leader, President Ilham Aliyev, declared that oil and gas were a “gift of God,” that talk about Azeri emissions was “Western fake news,” and that gas production would ratchet up by a third over the next decade.

It was an inauspicious start to a conference marked by cognitive dissonance in which oil-producing countries tried to present themselves to the world as leading guardians of the planet while behind closed doors resisting all pressure to cut fossil fuel extraction.

This reporter visited the Saudi pavilion to ask about problems the country was experiencing due to climate change.

“What problems?” answered a young woman. When pressed, she said, “Sorry, I can only talk about renewable energy.”

At the pavilion of OPEC (representing the oil-producing nations), a timeline of so-called climate-tech positive benchmarks covered a wall.  The representative tried to dissuade this reporter from any notion that OPEC countries were key drivers of climate change.

Fossil-fuel burning creates what scientists used to call the “greenhouse effect.” The sun heats Earth, but a blanket of excess gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prevents the heat from escaping.

This reality, confirmed by thousands of scientists, didn’t stop the Gas Exporting Countries Forum from promoting “Natural Gas For Sustainable Development” —  contradicting environmentalists’ definition of “sustainable,” which means meeting humanity’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do so.

Nor did it prevent the Azerbaijanis from granting access to over 1,700 oil and gas lobbyists, according to an activist coalition called Kick Big Polluters Out.

A place to learn

COP pavilions supply the hustle and bustle alongside the staid policy discussions held in cavernous halls by suit-clad men and women representing dozens of nations.

In the pavilions, government officials, nongovernment organizations, businesspeople, academics, and scientists rub shoulders, network, and exchange ideas and solutions to the — literally — burning issues of the day.

Unlike at the Saudi pavilion, the effects of climate change are real and present, as this reporter heard from an Omani representative. Around 70 percent of the population lives on the coast, exposed to rising sea levels. Cyclones are increasing; rain falls in such intense bursts that the dry soil can’t absorb it, and most flows back to the sea. As groundwater declines, seawater is entering the depleted aquifers, and fish stocks are dwindling because of rising temperatures and sea salinity. Dengue fever is on the rise.

At the Iraq pavilion, a representative from the state-founded Carbon Economics Company presented Iraqi health ministry data showing that cancer cases had risen from 39,000 in 2022 to 43,000 in 2023. With emissions of over 200 million tons a year from oil production, the man said, “Imagine our pollution. The only direction is death if we don’t solve the problems.”

Israel strutted its tech

Israel sent a delegation of well over a hundred people despite the challenges of finding partners for events and fears that its pavilion would be boycotted because of the ongoing war with terror groups Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Security was tight. Azerbaijan borders Israel’s sworn enemy Iran. (Iran’s pavilion was empty when this reporter visited.) Israeli delegation members stayed together and were prohibited from straying beyond hotel rooms and the conference, which restricted their participation in many events held elsewhere.

However, business was still brisk at Israel’s pavilion, which showcased 20 climate tech projects, 10 each week.

A pair of memorandums of understanding were signed on environmental education (with Azerbaijan) and partnership (with Greece).

This reporter didn’t spot any outwardly identifiable Arab delegates at the Israeli pavilion but witnessed and heard about multiple expressions of overseas interest and meetings that might lead to deals.

In cramped conditions, Israel hosted around 35 events on subjects ranging from innovation to regional cooperation.

As Foreign Office climate envoy Gideon Behar said upon opening the pavilion, Israel might be small but it punches above its weight on the climate solutions it can offer to the world.

A place to inspire

While Israel couldn’t even bring a climate act to Baku that would oblige Jerusalem to set and stick to emissions-cut targets, one could only gawp at the achievements of some of the Northern European countries.

At the Danish pavilion, a presenter explained that Denmark was on track for an electricity system run entirely on renewable energy by 2030. (Admittedly, Denmark has plentiful wind, which Israel lacks, and is connected to other country grids for emergency backup, which Israel is not.)

While Israeli state comptroller reports routinely criticize the lack of coordination on climate and other issues, Denmark managed to divide the economy into 14 sectors and get the stakeholders in each to develop proposals to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030. According to the Danish representative, public-private partnerships are already implementing some 80% of those proposals.

No longer ‘fit for purpose’?

With political talks on climate seemingly stuck by the end of the first week, former leaders and climate experts declared on November 14 that the unwieldy COP was no longer fit for purpose and needed reform.

It’s not easy for nearly 200 countries to reach a consensus when the spectrum ranges from island nations set to sink as sea levels rise all the way to petrostates intent on continuing to burn the fossil fuels that are speeding that rise in the first place.

Even before COP started, the brand had taken a drubbing with news that leaders from the biggest emitting countries — among them China, Russia, India, and the post-election US — would not attend. (This didn’t stop Russia and China from investing in huge pavilions.)

This year’s COP was slated for Eastern Europe. Russia, which had veto power over the location, banned any country that had voiced support for Ukraine and arranged for Azerbaijan to be the host.

The incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump was felt by the proceedings, with fears that his promised re-withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement would rid the world of strong climate-positive leadership.

In 2015, countries agreed to keep the global average temperature rise within two degrees Celsius (3.6°F) compared to pre-industrial times, and preferably to 1.5°C (2.7°F.) 2024 is already on track to be the hottest year on record, and warming has already hit 1.5°C.

Political disputes saw the climate-skeptic Argentinian leader withdrawing his delegation and France’s environmental transition minister canceling her trip after Aliyev lambasted the French humanitarian record.

Israel’s president canceled his visit on Saturday after pro-Palestinian Turkey reportedly refused to allow his plane to cross Turkish airspace.

Seamless organization

Politics aside, the Azerbaijanis put on an impressive show. With less than a year to prepare for tens of thousands of overseas guests, the central Asian government used the best of its autocratic tools to ensure that logistically, at least, everything worked seamlessly.

Roads were repaved, buildings cleaned, and plans to complete parks sped up.

There were reports of a pre-confab clampdown on regime opponents, and the clearing out of Baku’s beggars, manual day labor seekers, and small stall vendors. The government was said to have ordered public sector employees to work from home and extended school and university vacations to keep traffic off otherwise jammed main roads. This enabled fleets of COP29 shuttle buses to speed effortlessly along wide boulevards lined with buildings reminiscent of an imperial capital.

The Times of Israel was even told that a white spray had appeared a fortnight before along the Caspian shores to rid the seashore promenade of oil smells.

Police were present throughout the city, and the entire army seemed to be guarding the stadium’s perimeter. Inside, hundreds, if not thousands, of young people were on hand to answer inquiries and direct the rivers of people.

The few permitted protests on climate and against Israel’s wars were muted and small.

The ‘Finance COP’

COP29, dubbed “the finance COP,” has two main goals. One is to finalize the rules for trading “carbon credits” that allow fossil fuel burners to “offset” their emissions by buying credits (investing in) low-emitting countries. The other is to substantially increase the amount of money the carbon-guzzling Global North pays the Global South to deal with the consequences of climate change, such as floods, drought, sea level rise, and increasingly unpredictable and destructive weather.

On the first day of the confab, Azerbaijan hurried to announce progress on the first, although plentiful problems remain.

However, by the conference’s midpoint, there was no sign of movement on the second. Indeed, A 52-foot-long model of a sperm whale washed up on the shore of the Caspian Sea seemed a perfect metaphor for talks that looked destined to run aground.

It remains to be seen whether this changes and whether Brazil, set to host COP30 next year, can do any better.