The president of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s U.N. climate summit, criticized Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry on Tuesday. In his keynote address at the COP29 climate summit, where nearly 200 nations are negotiating global action on climate change, President Ilham Aliyev described Azerbaijan as a victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail.” Almost immediately, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres took the stage to assert that continuing to invest in fossil fuels was an absurd strategy.
This conflicting perspective highlighted the core challenge of the climate negotiations: while countries are encouraged to transition to green energy sources, many, including affluent Western nations, still depend on fossil fuels. Azerbaijan claims that the share of oil and gas in its economy is decreasing as it diversifies into other sectors. “
As president of COP29, we will, of course, be strong advocates for a green transition, and we are making progress. But at the same time, we must be realistic,” said Aliyev, who referred to his country’s oil and gas resources as a “gift from God.” He argued that countries should not be criticized for possessing these resources or for bringing them to market, as there is a demand for them. Aliyev specifically singled out the United States, the largest historic carbon emitter, and the European Union for criticism.
“Unfortunately, the double standards, the tendency to lecture other countries, and political hypocrisy have become a modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs, and dubious news media in certain Western nations,” he stated. While the United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, European countries have stringent emissions reduction targets for 2030 but have also raced to secure new gas supplies after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Reactions to Aliyev’s contentious speech among observers of the COP29 negotiations were mixed, with some suggesting it might impede progress toward a strong outcome from the two-week summit. “Using a climate conference to promote the ongoing production and use of fossil fuels is provocative and deeply disrespectful to nations facing the brunt of climate impacts,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at the campaign group Oil Change International.
This tension also revealed mistrust between wealthy and developing nations, many of which feel that affluent countries have not done enough to address a crisis they largely created. Climate activist Harjeet Singh remarked, “Developed nations have not only neglected their historical responsibility to cut emissions; they are also doubling down on fossil-fuel-driven growth. Such hypocrisy poses a dangerous dereliction of duty that jeopardizes our collective future.”
U.S. national climate advisor Ali Zaidi dismissed President Aliyev’s comments and stated that if every country decarbonized at the pace of the United States, the world would achieve its climate goals. On the same day, the Biden administration finalized a methane fee for major oil and gas producers to mitigate methane emissions, although this measure is likely to be repealed by the incoming president, Donald Trump. The European Union declined to comment on Aliyev’s speech. In Europe, however, a Dutch appeals court issued a landmark ruling favoring Shell in dismissing a prior order for the company to significantly reduce emissions. This year’s summit is intended to focus on raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a global transition to cleaner energy sources and limit the climate damage from carbon emissions.
“The world must pay up, or humanity will pay the price,” Guterres stated at the summit. “We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and time is not on our side.” However, on the day designed to draw together world leaders and generate political momentum for extensive negotiations, many key figures were not present to hear Guterres’ appeal. Following Trump’s victory in the U.S. election, President Biden has not attended COP29.
Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a deputy, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also chose not to attend. Britain did send its newly elected Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who announced an updated emissions reduction target of 81% by 2035. He asserted that these more ambitious targets would be reached through investments in renewable and nuclear energy, carbon capture technology, and hydrogen fuel.
At a news conference on Tuesday, COP29 officials aimed to redirect attention to the summit’s climate finance objectives. “Enabling every country to take strong climate action is in the best interests of all nations, including the largest and wealthiest,” said Simon Stiell, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which facilitates the summit. “The climate crisis is rapidly becoming an economy-killer,” he added.
With this year projected to be the hottest on record, scientists warn that global warming and its effects are unfolding faster than anticipated, intensifying the urgency for collective action.
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