Host Country Azerbaijan’s President Tells Climate Talks That Fossil Fuels Rock

In the months leading up to COP29, the host nation’s reliance on oil and gas was an obvious point of contention, though maybe one most assumed could at least be kept to a background hum. That’s because this is the third straight year where the host functioned more or less as a petrostate, and while there were plenty of problems the COPs in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and Dubai, they at least managed to avoid having world leaders hyping fossil fuels from the podium.

Well, that streak is broken. Today in Baku, Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev repeated his mantra that his country’s oil and gas reserves are a “gift of the God.” He said this in his official address to COP29. Which is a conference about fixing climate change. Which is caused by burning fossil fuels.

“Countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them,” Aliyev went on, in the vein of someone who kinda doesn’t want to be hosting global climate talks.

In general, the first few days of a COP feature speeches from world leaders saying more or less the same thing: Let’s do more to fix this, more action is needed, we are all in this together, etcetera etcetera. So this was something of a departure, though perhaps it’s not that surprising; Aliyev has been in power since 2003 and is generally considered a dictator, so maybe is a bit less concerned with appearances than most. It’s fair to say that the rest of the speeches probably won’t sound like his.

“Doubling down on fossil fuels is absurd,” confirmed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in his own address to the COP. “The clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, and no government can stop it.” He may be right, but the president of the host of the climate talks is apparently going to try.