It’s that time of the year again. The United Nations is hosting its annual climate conference, dubbed “COP”, referring to “Conference of the Parties”. This time, the global climate circus is heading to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. 

“COP29” is likely to break all records when it comes to hypocrisy. As always, one can expect celebrities and politicians to jet off to the conference in order to pontificate how ordinary folks should feel guilty for taking an airplane to go on holiday. Images of attendants arriving on the tarmac are surely once again going to make the rounds on social media, where they will be met with the scorn they deserve. 

This time around, however, COP is taking it one step further when it comes to hypocrisy. The bulk of Azerbaijan’s GDP, and about 90 percent of its export revenues, are derived from oil and gas production. That’s not exactly in line with the mission of the climate conference to “transition away” from fossil fuels altogether. 

Calling for such intrusive policies would at least require some democratic legitimacy. But Azerbaijan is not exactly known as a textbook democracy. In this year’s Freedom House human rights index, the country scored 7 out of 100, near the bottom of the league, in the questionable company of the likes of Russia, Belarus and North Korea. On the sub-ranking of “political rights”, it scores zero.

The Baku climate conference has been named “the COP of Peace” by the Azeri government. This label seems perplexing, given how only last year Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory it disputes with Armenia, resulting in the displacement of no less than 100,000 ethnic Armenians. It also came with the unlawful jailing of many as political prisoners, including several ministers of the former Armenian government of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Also in Azeri jails are climate activists like Anar Mammadli, who has been arrested ahead of COP29 on what Amnesty International described as “bogus charges”. Human Rights Watch has deplored that there is an “escalating crackdown on critics and civil Society” in Azerbaijan, documenting in a new report how “criminal charges” have in many cases been used as a “pretext intended to punish and put an end to activists’ legitimate work.”

Noteworthy in the context of Western government pledging to reduce fossil fuel consumption, furthermore, is the fact that Azerbaijan has been a documented conduit for Russian fossil fuels to Western Europe, after the sanctions on Russian energy exports were imposed. In fact, in 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen headed to Baku in order to beg for more gas deals. 

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with realpolitik, and it is probably hard to avoid importing resources from countries that are not overly democratic. The key problem here however is that while Western Europe continues to happily import fossil fuels from places like Azerbaijan, it is also shutting down its domestic fossil fuel production. The previous Dutch government for example decided to shut down the Groningen gas field, one of the world’s biggest, and the new government looks afraid to reopen it. There, gas exploration has caused earthquakes, which have damaged houses, but researchers from The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies have pointed out that due to more responsible drilling in Groningen, seismic risks “are now comparable to those in Vienna.” 

In the UK, the former head of Oil & Gas UK has accused politicians of “gross negligence” towards the offshore industries and their workers, warning that politicians with little knowledge of the industry were destroying it. Meanwhile, India’s government just announced it is opening up a million square kilometres for oil exploration.

Surely, if one were to phase out fossil fuels, one would start with phasing out imports of fossil fuels from less than reliable authoritarian countries, rather than the domestic production, which also tends to happen in a way that is more respectful of the environment. 

Self-flagellation is, however, deeply baked into the current Western European climate policies, and the consensus at the COP climate conference is certainly one of blame. Despite that, alternative climate policies are conceivable. 

For example, in a new study, the Warsaw Enterprise Institute and like-minded think tanks have proposed replacing the collectivist “Paris Agreement” with a “Climate & Freedom Accord”. Signatories to this international treaty would  benefit from trade advantages, provided that they implement climate-friendly free-market policies. 

The think tanks argue this would “de-bureaucratise the economy”, along with “tax changes … to make investing in PP&E (Property, Plant, and Equipment) more profitable in a way that incentivises companies not only to maintain their current capacities but also to modernise and develop new projects. Subsidies of any kind should be abolished in an orderly and gradual manner.” 

Such an alternative approach would put innovation rather than a more austere approach at the heart of climate policy. None of this is getting much sympathy at COP, and we should not expect the likes of the European Union to change course. On the contrary, the EU is in the process of expanding the reach of its “emission trading system”, which effectively serves as a climate tax. As a result, in 2025, the price of natural gas in the EU is scheduled to be five times higher than in the United States in 2025. The cost of the EU’s climate tax alone is higher than the total cost of natural gas in the U.S. How on earth could Europe’s energy-intensive industry be expected to compete? Yet, the EU happily imports gas from Azerbaijan, in order to then tax it. 

… there is a difference between maintaining trade relations with Azerbaijan and allowing it to host international policy conferences

Elsewhere, the EU is proceeding with its protectionist climate tariff CBAM, despite the fact that this has angered trading partners like India. In Britain, a debate is raging on whether to copy the EU’s folly. A new study by the UK Growth Commission warns that if the UK were to do this, it “could lead to GDP per capita losses of between roughly £150 and £300”, or even up to £650, in case supply chains would realign around the lowest cost producers. The researchers have also calculated the benefits of the approach of replacing the Paris Accord with the mentioned Climate and Freedom Accord, estimating these at £1,000 per capita.

Obviously, it is important to engage with all countries, which may ultimately contribute to democratisation, but there is a difference between maintaining trade relations with Azerbaijan and allowing it to host international policy conferences whose recommendations are taken seriously by Western governments. In the case of COP, it is perhaps not such a good idea to take it seriously in the first place. This could serve as a silver lining to the event being hosted in Baku.