The Petroletariat Reigns Over COP29

BAKU, Azerbaijan — COP29, the 29th United Nations’ “Conference of Parties” to the climate convention, convened this year in Azerbaijan, a small, authoritarian petrostate wedged between Russia and Iran on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The worsening climate catastrophe, fueled by the world’s centuries-long embrace of fossil fuels, demands a united, world-wide response from all nations, including authoritarian ones. But does the conference itself have to be held in a country where dissent is criminalized, protests are banned and there is no free press nor right to free speech?

The world’s oil addiction arguably began in Baku. It was here, in 1846, that the first industrial oil well was drilled. As revolution swept through Europe and beyond in 1848, and Karl Marx’s newly published Communist Manifesto reminded workers that they had nothing to lose but their chains, humanity was busily chaining itself to fossil fuels. More than 175 years later, our ever-increasing burning of coal, oil and gas has heated the planet with a cascade of catastrophic consequences, from more frequent and intense hurricanes and typhoons to wildfires, droughts and tornadoes — increasing human suffering and driving mass migration.

This crisis will only accelerate unless a comprehensive solution is negotiated, implemented and enforced on a global scale. Which brings us to Baku, and the fundamentally flawed decision to hold these vital talks in a place where speaking freely can get you arrested by the government of President Ilham Aliyev.

“Azerbaijan has had an abysmal rights record for many years, but it has dramatically deteriorated in the run-up to COP29,” Giorgi Gogia of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on the Democracy Now news hour. He noted HRW has “documented 33 cases of arrests and imprisonment of journalists, activists, human rights defenders and government critics on various bogus charges. … Think about what this COP would have been like if they were there to voice their criticism, for their voices to be heard by the globe.” Others say the number of arrests prior to COP29 is closer to 300.

Gubad Ibadoghlu, an anti-corruption economist who has taught at the London School of Economics, is under house arrest. His crime? Demanding greater transparency in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas revenues. In July 2023, Ibadoghlu and his wife were violently arrested. He faces up to 17 years in prison. Their daughter, Zhala Bayramova, was also arrested and tortured.

“I’m a human rights lawyer, but I was also working as an activist, observing elections, writing cases to the European Court of Human Rights,” Zhala said on Democracy Now from outside Azerbaijan. “As a result of all this torture, I cannot sleep without a neck pillow, as they injured my neck discs. They also crushed my ribs and my kneecaps.”

“Before Ilham Aliyev, it was his father who was also president of Azerbaijan, and during the Soviet Union, a KGB general,” she continued. “And Ilham Aliyev, it seems, is getting his son ready to succeed himself. His wife is the vice president of Azerbaijan. So, it’s more like a monarchy. It’s a family affair, in a sense, and they own everything.”

The climate summit was housed in Baku’s main sports stadium and several adjoining temporary structures, in a secure space dubbed “the Blue Zone,” where the U.N. controlled security and set the rules. In this Potemkin village, protest is tolerated if pre-authorized and then only at specified locations and times; at one official site, protesters can make noise, give speeches or even sing. At the other site, only silent protest is permitted, with allowances for soft humming and finger snapping, due to its proximity to meeting rooms, the U.N. said. But behind the closed doors of those meeting rooms, where the future of the planet’s climate was being decided, the more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists registered for COP29 were able to speak freely, to mingle with government delegations, to influence the course of the negotiations, uninterrupted by the silent protests outside.

Global petroleum production and consumption are at an all-time high, while 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record, trumping last year’s record heat. Science tells us that the worst impacts of the climate emergency still can be avoided, if urgent and ambitious action is taken.

Autocrats like Ilham Aliyev, and aspiring autocrats like Donald Trump, love the wealth and power that flow from oil. Trump has already promised to withdraw from the Paris Agreement … again. Grassroots movements and global solidarity will be needed as people fight the twin threats of authoritarianism and climate change in these coming crisis years.

These difficult times recall the words of 20th-century philosopher Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned by the Italian fascist Mussolini for 12 years, until his death. In his Prison Writings, translated from Italian, Gramsci wrote,

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”