BAKU, Azerbaijan — The petrostate autocrat and host of this year’s COP29 climate talks, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, used his opening address to gripe at hypocritical Western governments who buy his gas and lecture him about torching the planet.
“Unfortunately double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled [nongovernmental organizations] and fake news media in some Western countries,” Aliyev said.
Opening speeches at the annual COP climate conferences rarely contain such frank and unsparing political attacks, nor such open fossil fuel defenses — especially not by the host nation.
Oil and gas, Aliyev said, are “a gift of the God” — just the same as any other natural resource.
