Al Gore calls for reform of COP climate process

“I believe the method ought to be reformed,” Gore mentioned of the COP summit course of in an unique interview with Euronews within the Azerbaijani capital Baku.

“I believe it is absurd to have, for instance, what we had final yr with the CEO of one of many dirtiest oil firms on the planet serving because the president of the COP,” he mentioned in reference to the 2023 local weather summit in Dubai.

“It’s a direct battle of curiosity,” he continued, arguing that the issue persists this yr with Azerbaijan taking up the COP presidency.

“Whereas the president of this COP was not the top of the oil business, he’s very a lot in sync with this nation’s reliance on fossil fuels,” Gore mentioned. “Ninety per cent of their stability of funds is coming from the sale of oil and fuel.”

Mukhtar Babayev, appointed Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and pure assets in 2018 after a profession spanning twenty years with the State Oil Firm of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar), was named in January to preside over this yr’s COP.

Gore pointed to Russia, which had vetoed the thought of any EU nation internet hosting the talks, because the driving drive behind the number of Azerbaijan, which falls throughout the broadly outlined japanese European area that was in line for the presidency this yr.

“Because the loudest voice on this area of the world … it was actually Russia that made this selection,” mentioned Gore, whose local weather activism since narrowly shedding the US presidential election in 2020 noticed him share the Nobel Peace Prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change in 2007.

Gore spoke to Euronews shortly earlier than internet hosting an occasion with the Local weather Actuality Mission that he based again in 2006 and which he nonetheless chairs.

“One of many reforms that I’ve proposed is to present the [UN] secretary basic a say in who hosts the COPs, and never simply depart it to permit voices like Vladimir Putin’s to find out who will get this one, and let the petrostates of the Center East determine,” Gore mentioned.

The previous US vice-president, who served alongside President Invoice Clinton from 1993 to 2001, additionally warned towards counting on technological fixes to deal with the local weather disaster, as common world temperatures climb steadily in direction of the restrict of 1.5 °C above the place they stood earlier than the flip of the 20 th century.

Gore singled out carbon seize and storage (CCS), which generally entails pumping CO2 underground or beneath the seabed into depleted fuel fields, a know-how that’s being promoted each within the US and in Europe underneath the EU’s Internet Zero Trade Act.

“They have been confirmed to be fully ridiculous and completely ineffective,” Gore asserted. “After all, the fossil gas firms need to fake that that is the answer – something aside from lowering the quantity of fossil fuels which are burned or lowering their markets.”

Relating to the COP29 summit, surrounded as it’s by diplomatic spats and criticism of the heavy presence of oil and fuel lobbyists, Gore was clear on what end result is required within the space of local weather finance – the main focus of negotiations this yr.

“Should you have a look at the financing for the clear power revolution so far as it has gone to this point, 85% of the financing has been from the personal sector,” Gore mentioned.

“The true downside is that growing nations who haven’t been capable of take part very a lot…should pay such excessive rates of interest that they’re walled off from entry to the personal capital from traders all over the world.”

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The summit in Baku is scheduled to run till 22 November, by which date it’s hoped that the practically 200 nations collaborating will agree a ‘new collective quantified aim’ for financing the power transition and local weather adaption within the growing world.

Video editor • Evelyn Ann-Marie Dom