UN climate conference COP 29 | Will host city Baku see fires of change?
The HinduThis November, the city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, will host the 29th edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the annual conclave of heads of state, diplomats, business delegations, and activists, who amidst a media blitz, will wrangle an incremental deal to tarry the climate crisis. Azerbaijan was the home of the world’s first ‘oil boom’, after European and American industrialists discovered the region’s vast oil resources as a source for extracting natural gas and distilling kerosene — a replacement for whale oil that was the pre-electric world’s fuel of choice for heating and lighting. Their house in Baku, now preserved as ‘the Nobel Brothers Museum’ is part-museum and part-club, where oil magnates, who are members, still host get-togethers, business meetings and entertain heads of state in its plush halls resplendent in 19th century European decor. “The luxury business centre in the shape of the flames becomes literally a shining symbol of Azerbaijan’s 21st century oil capitalism, with all the wealth, glamour, social exclusion, and division that it brings,” said scholar Leyla Sayfutdinova of the University of Glasgow, in an essay on the relationship between the oil industry and urban development in Azerbaijan. Orkhan Zeynalov, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Minister of Energy, said in an interview that while the country had set up, and planned on expanding, its solar farms, it would be “challenging” to convince the population — used to cheap oil and electricity — to adopt the more-expensive version from renewable sources.