COP29 Preview: Hot Talk vs. Reality

“What to expect from COP 29 in Baku come November? In the words of the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra: ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again’.”

Remember COP28? Forget about it. Most everybody else has. This is COP29, Nov. 11-24, 2024, the 29th annual international greenwashing gabfest about the world’s promised actions to deal with a climate being changed by man-made global warming. Most of those meetings have had little real impact, generating more heat, rancor, posturing, and light — and sometimes state-sponsored repression —  than measurable movement toward significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2).

The formal title of these highly-hyped, frequently ignored, sometimes entertaining gatherings is the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” with the inevitable acronym of UNFCC. The selection of Azerbaijan to host the meeting is significant. It is the third predominantly Muslim country and the third authoritarian regime to host the meeting: Egypt in 2022, the United Arab Emirates in 2023, and Azerbaijan in November.

Welcome to Baku, population 2 million, the capital of Azerbaijan, a country of 10 million. Azerbaijan is the second consecutive major oil producer to host a gathering that, at least rhetorically, is targeting fossil fuels as a key driver of increasing global temperatures.

Azerbaijan: Big Oil

The country is located with its east coast on the Caspian Sea: Russia and Georgia to the north, Armenia to the east (and containing territory claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan), and Iran to the south. The country is deeply tied to oil. According to International Energy Agency data, oil and gas accounts for 90% of the country’s export revenues and some 60% of the nation’s budget. The oil roots are deep. 

A birthplace of petroleum, oil production began around 1850 from dug wells and spread with the adoption of kerosene lamps and internal combustion engines. By the start of the 20th Century, Azerbaijan was the world’s leading oil state, producing over half of the world’s supply and known as the “Black Gold Capital.”

The Republic of Azerbaijan, a Soviet Union satellite from 1920 to 1991, is nominally a “semi-presidential republic,” meaning it has both an elected president and a parliamentary prime minister, but in practice is a hereditary monarchy since 1993, when Heydar Aliyev took power. His son Ilhan Aliyev now runs the country and hand-picked the host country team that will lead the conference.

The country has a bad record on human rights. According to a 2023 analysis by Human Rights Watch,

The government severely restricted freedoms of expression, assembly, and association. Despite some progress on a notorious torture case, torture and ill-treatment in police custody and places of detention persisted.

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) earlier this month criticized the selection of Azerbaijan to host the conference. Cardin, who is retiring at the end of the current Congress, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said that “hosting a major international conference like COP29 should come with responsibilities and expectations that host countries allow frank discussion of information and issues, which requires recognizing freedoms of speech and assembly. Azerbaijan has not done so.”

Cardin called on the Heydar government to “release those unjustly imprisoned by his government, including Armenian detainees, and community activists who peacefully demonstrated against poor labor practices and harmful environmental impacts of the Chovdar gold mine operation.”

Agenda 29

When the world’s policy waffle-chefs arrive in Baku in November, the formal and informal agendas will be familiar: advancing their government favored technologies and energy sources, portraying their patrons as environmental saints, and avoiding the embarrassing question of how to aid those poor countries who may suffer from a changed climate but did little compared to the world’s wealthy countries, who created the problem.

For the majority of the formal delegates representing established and entrenched industries and countries, Job 1 will be damage control. As reported by the Financial Times (September 13):

Oil-rich nations are making a concerted effort to slow progress on a landmark agreement to end the use of fossil fuels, according to western nations taking part in global climate change talks.

At COP 28 (remember that?) the confab agreed to “transition” away from fossil fuels by 2050 (a date far enough into the future to have little immediate consequence) and triple renewable energy by 2030. A side agreement, not part of the official conference, led by nuclear nations, called for a worldwide tripling of nuclear power generating capacity by 2030, an unachievable goal.

The FT identified Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Bolivia as among the group of oil producers looking to prevent any momentum developing for the fossil phase-out. The world’s largest oil producer, the United States, will likely bob-and-weave and produce word salad press releases. Azerbaijan is likely to tap dance around the topic as it presides.

Compensation Gymnastics

Another long-running issue is what, how much, how, and when the rich will come up with compensation for the poor victims. Scotland’s The National reported, “Finance is expected to dominate COP29 in Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22, with countries still deadlocked on how to deliver more funds to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.”

Earlier COP conventions agreed to create a $100 billion-per-year compensation fund, without any specifics such as how it would be run, how much it would distribute, and other necessary details. COP28 agreed to “operationalization” of such a fund, whatever that specifically means and, no surprises here, nothing has been done. The U.S. committed to provide $100 million, but that commitment is meaningless without the administrative mechanisms and transfer of funds. 

Looking at the Dubai agreement on compensation, a critic commented that it “contains no specifics on scale, financial targets or how it will be funded. Instead, the decision merely ‘invites’ developed nations to ‘take the lead’ in providing finance and support and encourages commitments from other parties.

It also fails to detail which countries will be eligible to receive funding and vaguely states it would be for ‘economic and non-economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events.’ So far, pledges have been underwhelming.”

At a pre-conference technical meeting in Baku in mid-month, the FT reported, “African governments called for more than [$1.3 trillion] a year in climate finance.”

Conclusion

COP 29 continues down a path outlined by the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. James Hansen, the father of the modern climate activism, commented at the time that Paris

is a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit… There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.

What to expect from COP 29 in Baku come November? In the words of the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

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Kennedy Maize blogs at The Quad Report, from which this post was adapted. Maize has been a Washington-based journalist covering energy and environmental topics for more than 40 years.

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