BAKU, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev used a keynote speech on the COP29 local weather summit to lash out at Western critics of his nation’s oil and gasoline business, saying it had been the sufferer of a “well-orchestrated marketing campaign of slander and blackmail”.
The feedback got here on the second day of a summit at which practically 200 nations are assembly to debate how they will lower fossil gasoline emissions, and moments earlier than United Nations Secretary-Basic Antonio Guterres mentioned doubling down on fossil fuels was an absurd technique.
The airing of those opposing views on the primary stage underscore the problem on the coronary heart of the local weather negotiations: many Western states stay depending on fossil fuels whereas on the identical time in search of to stress others who produce them into shifting to greener power sources.
On the identical time, a Dutch attraction court docket issued a landmark climate ruling in favour of oil and gas company Shell, dismissing an order for it to sharply scale back emissions.
Azerbaijan’s oil and gasoline revenues accounted for 35 per cent of its financial system in 2023, down from 50 per cent two years earlier. The federal government says these revenues will decline to 22 per cent by 2028.
“As a president of COP29 in fact, we might be a robust advocate for inexperienced transition, and we’re doing it. However on the identical time, we should be real looking,” mentioned Aliyev, who has labelled his nation’s oil and gasoline sources a “reward from god”.
“International locations shouldn’t be blamed for having them, and shouldn’t be blamed for bringing these sources to the market, as a result of the market wants them. The individuals want them.”
He singled out the USA, the world’s largest historic carbon emitter, and the European Union for specific criticism.
“Sadly, double requirements, a behavior to lecture different nations, and political hypocrisy grew to become type of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and pretend information media in some Western nations,” he mentioned.
The US is the world’s largest oil and gasoline producer. European nations, in the meantime, have among the world’s strictest targets to chop emissions by 2030 – however, on the identical time have raced to safe new gasoline provides following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
US nationwide local weather advisor Ali Zaidi disregarded President Aliyev’s remarks, saying if each nation decarbonised on the tempo of the US, the world would meet its local weather targets. The EU declined to remark.