BAKU, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev used his opening speech at the COP29 climate summit to lash out at Western criticism of his country’s oil and gas industry, saying it had been the victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail”.

The comments come on the second day of a summit where nearly 200 countries are meeting to discuss how they can reduce fossil fuel emissions, and moments before United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared that doubling fossil fuel consumption was an absurd strategy.

Expressing these opposing views on the main stage underscores the challenge at the heart of climate negotiations: many Western states remain dependent on fossil fuels while at the same time seeking to pressure those who produce them to they are turning to greener energy sources.

At the same time, a Dutch appeals court issued a ruling Landmark climate decision in favor of oil and gas company Shellrejecting an order requiring it to sharply reduce its emissions.

Azerbaijan’s oil and gas revenues accounted for 35 percent of its economy in 2023, up from 50 percent two years earlier. The government says these revenues will decline to 22 percent by 2028.

“As president of COP29, we will of course be a strong advocate of the green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic,” said Aliyev, who called oil and gas resources a his country as a “gift of God”.

“Countries should not be blamed for having these resources, nor for putting them on the market, because the market needs them. The people need them.”

He was particularly critical of the United States, the world’s largest historical carbon emitter, and the European Union.

“Unfortunately, double standards, lecturing to other countries and political hypocrisy have become a kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake media in some Western countries,” he said. he declared.

The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. European countries, meanwhile, have some of the world’s toughest targets for reducing emissions by 2030 – but, at the same time, have rushed to secure new gas supplies after the invasion at large scale of Ukraine by Russia in 2022.

U.S. National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi rejected President Aliyev’s remarks, saying that if every country decarbonized at the United States’ pace, the world would meet its climate goals. The EU declined to comment.