Oiled Up
The United Nations Convention of the Events (COP), a yearly local weather change convention the place world leaders convene to debate simply how screwed we actually are, has lengthy been revealed to be a sham.
The grip the fossil gasoline trade has had over the organizers and host international locations turned painfully obvious final yr when convention chief and Emirati oil govt Sultan Al Jaber claimed that there is “no science” behind phasing out fossil fuels to maintain international temperatures from creeping above 1.5 levels Celsius, a preposterous and self-serving declare that flies within the face of many years of scientific proof.
And this yr’s COP29 local weather change convention in Azerbaijan is seemingly no completely different. A secret recording obtained by the BBC exhibits Elnur Soltanov, the chief govt of the COP29 group — who additionally occurs to be the Asian nation’s deputy power minister and senior govt on the nationwide oil and gasoline firm Socar — discussing “funding alternatives.”
“We have now plenty of gasoline fields which are to be developed,” he will be heard saying within the video.
Name the COPs
Soltanov was attempting to woo an undercover consultant from the human rights watch marketing campaign International Witness, who advised the oil exec he represented the pursuits of a fictitious Hong Kong-based oil and gasoline firm.
“I might be completely satisfied to create a contact between your group and their group [Socar] in order that they’ll begin discussions,” Soltanov advised the faux oil operative.
None of this could come as a lot of a shock. Azerbaijan’s financial system depends massively on oil, accounting for a whopping 90 p.c of its specialists.
Naturally, the UN physique reacted with outrage, telling the BBC that Soltanov’s bare curiosity in furthering oil and gasoline investments was “utterly unacceptable” and a “betrayal.”
Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the signing of the historic Paris Settlement in 2015, advised the BBC that Soltanov’s conduct was “opposite and egregious” to the aim of the yearly conferences, and a “treason.”
Final yr’s COP28 convention was a counterproductive circus, because the BBC revealed on the time, with the United Arab Emirates utilizing scheduled conferences for “personal” oil and gasoline enterprise talks.
In different phrases, claiming these summits are designed to “measure progress and negotiate multilateral responses to local weather change” is in some ways deceptive and disingenuous.
The sort of investments Soltanov is encouraging, in spite of everything, straight contradict the promise nations made finally yr’s local weather change convention once they agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.
Briefly, COP29 feels like little greater than a discussion board for oil and gasoline executives to strike new offers — and world leaders to make vacuous guarantees usually with out taking any significant motion.
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