The climate movement’s annual showpiece, the United Nation’s Conference of Parties (COP), held this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been exposed to an unprecedented level of disinterest – even dissent – from developing nations.
Leaders of some of the world’s most resource-rich, economically aspiring countries have opted to sit this one out, sending only low-level delegates, if any. This is the latest signal of a growing resistance to an anti-fossil fuel “gospel” advanced by the United Nations.
Last year’s COP28 in the Middle East, where oil wealth underpins entire economies, forced the climate community to confront its contradictions. Today, COP29 in central Asia continues this reckoning and presages the demise of an unscientific and anti-developmental policy framework wrecking global economies.
Host of COP29 Educates Climate Woke Delegates
The tone of COP29 itself is a marked departure from prior gatherings. In Azerbaijan, where oil and gas production are integral to the national economy, the summit’s host, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, called fossil fuels “a gift from God,” lauding their contribution to global prosperity and stability.
Fossil fuels have moved from being a taboo “elephant in the room” to a subject of open discussion at COPs. The leaders of countries in Africa and Latin America are freely questioning the premise of banning their use of fossil fuels while much of the developed world continues to consume record amounts of coal, oil and natural gas. The notion that high-income nations can dictate the energy agenda is seen as a remnant of a power structure that primarily serves the interests of the world’s most privileged.
The International Energy Agency projects that developing countries will see substantial growth in energy demand over the next decade, an expansion that cannot be met by renewables. Leaders in these regions understand that hydrocarbons are critical to achieving their development goals.
Unprecedented Pullout from COP Conference and Resistance from Global South
In a surprising move, Argentina’s newly elected president, Javier Gerardo Milei, withdrew his country’s 80-person delegation from Baku less than a third of the way into this year’s 11-day COP. He cited the need for pragmatic energy policies that encourage development rather than stymie it.
For Milei, whose presidential campaign was based on a pro-business, anti-bureaucracy platform, the message is clear: Policy must serve the economic needs of his country first. Argentina’s ongoing energy crisis, its untapped shale gas reserves and a crippling economic situation demand a level-headed approach that prioritizes national interests over global climate ideals that are both batty and corrupt.
Milei’s political philosophy resonates with a growing number of leaders in the Global South who view economic growth as paramount and recognize that access to energy is fundamental to achieving it.
Argentina’s departure from COP29 is a turning point that should serve as a wake-up call to the U.N. and its allies. The time for one-size-fits-all mandates is over. The rigid orthodoxy of fossil fuel divestment pushed by the U.N. and wealthy nations is losing ground, challenged by leaders who refuse to sacrifice their national interests to a destructive agenda.
For much of the Global South, the idea of an immediate energy transition remains, at best, aspirational and, at worst, profoundly out of touch. The reality is that fossil fuels still power 80% of global energy consumption. This isn’t just an inconvenient truth; it’s an inescapable basis of modern civilization that developing nations understand viscerally.
As the COP29 circus concludes in Baku, the world is seeing the crumbling of the long-held illusion that a global transition to green energyis feasible, much less fair and desirable. Developing nations are proclaiming that they will not be deprived of necessary energy sources by nations that continue to feast on the very fossil fuels they frown upon. The disconnect between rhetoric and reality is stark, and developing countries are calling attention to it.
Fossil fuels are not a relic of the past; for many countries, they are the key to a prosperous future – truly “a gift from God.”
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and abachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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Reality intrudes.
And the warmunists call us “deniers” … pot calling kettle black alert!
The crusade to transition away from fossil fuels long since degenerated into a moral panic, then morphed into a kooky Neo-Prohibition movement to abolish the use of combustion fuels worldwide. No more fire, no more CO2 emissions, right? Easy peasy. Then the world can return to the pre-fire paradise it once was. Except it never was a paradise!
The climate panic with fire as the scapegoat, is a fad — an unusually long-lasting fad — but the fad will pass. The domestication of fire would be even harder to prohibit than the use of beverage alcohol. Nobody’s really going to do it.
In practice, no type of fuel has ever been “banned.” Harnessing energy of all kinds has been accretive. One fuel supplements another. There has never been any “transition.” Nobody has any real intention of transitioning out of the machine age, and going back to muscle power only.
We’re not really out of the Stone Age, either. Use of stone for masonry, gravel, concrete, etc. continues apace. Stone is not all we have since people learned how to smelt metals and bring them into common use. Yet we still use stone — more than ever before, thanks to the relative ease of metal tools to mine, grind, and process stones.
Prohibitionist zealots are not amenable to these kinds of simple observations, or rational analyses. Zeal is like that. Zeal is emotion-based, rather than fact-based.
Neo-Prohibitionist. Brilliant.
As long as countries could virtue signal and kick the can down the NetZero road they were happy. Many of those countries even thought free money was to be had, as promised. The AGW cabal thought they could control adoption of their diktats through intimidation (read Agenda 21). Slowly countries are coming to their senses that refusing fossil fuels is lifestyle suicide and would forever keep them under developed. AGW is going out of style, not with a bang, but a whimper.
AGW is going out of style. Slowly.
What is critical is CAGW going out of style. Immediately.
Really wish all would stop giving the climate alarmists credibility by using their propagana vocabulary.
Fossil fuels should be replace with coal and hydrocarbons, neither of which fit the geological definition of fossil.
If you really want to mess with their heads, stop using the propaganda term “fossil fuels”. I prefer the scientifically accurate term: organic fuels. Just watch lefty heads explode when you use that phrase. They love the word “organic” but, they don’t comprehend that, in chemistry, it means carbon-based. Carbon is the atom on which all life is based and their opposition to it makes them anti-life; on the darkside of history.
I’ll stop using ‘fossil’, if you can stop the use of ‘forcings’.
Why in the world would any human organization want to stop digging up wealth?
According to the IEA the 10 countries of SE Asia are second only to India in growth rate of energy demand with the region’s demand expected to grow by 33% by 2035.
Fossil fuels accounted for almost 75% of power sector inputs in 2023 with coal being the primary power source. OF additional electricity generation built over the last 20 years 60% was from coal.
The region has 110GW of coal fired power stations over 50% of which are less than 10
years old and 80% less than 20 years old. New plants are still being commissioned.
Whether this amounts to an ‘energy rebellion’ or is plain common sense is a matter of debate.
IEA ‘World Energy Outlook 2024’ (Oct. 2024)
This is good news but we need to direct our attention to the fact that the whole CAGW premise is invalid.
The consistency of the shortcomings and outright failures of the various climate conferences has been showing that most countries, especially those with growing economies, are fed up with the wealthier ones trying to force the climate crisis argument down their throats. We are reaching a point where those economies will not only just walk away from such conferences but also not bother to attend from the outset. Meanwhile, leaders of the advanced nations will realize that they can no longer scam voters into electing representatives who are supposedly out to save the country or entire planet by raising taxes and government revenues so that living costs continue to rise with no appreciable benefits. In other words, the climate argument and its associated meetings have become like a leaky ship, and it’s only a matter of time before it has to be abandoned altogether.
If they were really serious about lowering CO2 emissions then they would hold these meetings over the Internet and allow more people to remain in climate lockdown.