Mutiny Against the Oil Bounty? Signs of Revolt as COP29 Confab hits halfway point

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As the United Nations COP29 climate summit hits its halfway point this week, the enduring image of several days in Baku, Azerbaijan, of arguing about funds and emissions is not so much an image at all, but a smell. The smell of oil.

Dispatches from major news outlets on the ground in Baku mostly said the stink of the fossil fuel surrounding the old Olympic Stadium where the conference is being held was impossible to escape and served as a fitting symbol for a global process that has gone off the rails.

This is the third COP conference in a row being hosted by a petroleum state (UAE and Egypt were the last two) and some reports said as many 1,800 oil, gas and coal lobbyists are on the ground in Baku, representing 132 companies. Halfway through the list of agreements needed was still being argued about and the ubiquitous protesters of past summits were being held in staging areas and not allowed to yell.

New rules?
By Friday, amid complete standoffs on the idea of delegates committing to reducing fossil fuels, many environmental delegates were openly calling for a new system that bans oil countries from hosting future climate summits.

That’s not to say nothing has been done. An early agreement to build a global carbon market was hailed as a win, though mostly by the oil companies who can trade carbon to offset their emissions. And there is still a chance that some sort of financing agreement can be achieved this week to relieve the economic burden of transition on smaller, poorer countries, if China agrees to some role.

But at the midpoint, most anyone monitoring the summit for breakthroughs that go beyond geopolitics and actually move the world away from climate disaster will come to a similar conclusion of those journalists on the ground. The current process stinks.