Tackling climate change in the birthplace of oil
For the second year in a row, the United Nations climate summit, known as COP, will take place in a petrostate.
COP29 will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, and will be overseen by Mukhtar Babayev, who worked for more than twenty years at Socar, Azerbaijan’s state oil company. There is precedent: last year’s climate summit was controversially hosted by the United Arab Emirates and led by Sultan Al Jaber, who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Many activists strongly opposed Al Jaber’s involvement, but COP28 was ultimately seen by many as a success. His ability to bring together fossil fuel producing countries like his own helped lead to an agreement in which countries pledged to “move off” fossil fuels.
It remains to be seen whether Babayev, a former low-level administrator and now Azerbaijan’s environment minister, will have the same impact. But there is also a poignant historical resonance in the COP29: by some standards, Azerbaijan is where the modern oil industry began.
Oil ‘bubbled out of the ground’
Oil has been used as lamp fuel and medicine in Azerbaijan for thousands of years. Historians believe this 13th century account of the explorer Marco Polo refers to Baku:
“Near the Georgian border there is a spring from which flows a stream of oil in such abundance that a hundred ships can load at a time. This oil is not good to eat; but it is good for burning and as an ointment for men and camels that suffer from itching or scabs.”
“Azerbaijan was known for its oil that just bubbled out of the ground,” says Steve LeVine, the author of a book about oil in the Caspian Sea region, for which he writes an energy newsletter The information.
In the 19th century, Azerbaijan was the site of multiple innovations that gave rise to the modern oil industry, including one of the first mechanically drilled oil wells and the first Oil tanker.
The country’s oil industry was largely built by Robert Nobel, brother of dynamite inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel, along with another brother, Ludvig. In 1873, Robert was sent south from Russia to find walnut trees that could be used to make guns to sell to the Tsar’s army, but instead he stumbled upon Baku’s fledgling oil industry. With the ‘walnut money’ he bought a small refinery.
In 1884, The Times reported that Baku supplied all of Russia with oil, and “will undoubtedly supply much of Europe, India and China.” By 1900, Baku supplied about half of the world’s oil, with the rest coming largely from the United States.
Robert Nobel and his family reaped enormous profits, some of which ultimately helped creating the Nobel Prize.
“He invented the oil industry as we know it today,” LeVine said.
Azerbaijani oil today
It is expected that oil from Azerbaijan, which has been extracted for thousands of years, will do the same in about 25 years. But the country still has huge natural gas reserves and plans to increase production by a third in the next decade.
The country’s fossil fuel sector accounts for 90 percent of exports and two-thirds of his income.
Oil brought development to Azerbaijan. The country had electricity before many other parts of the Russian empire, LeVine said. The streets are lined with majestic buildings and gleaming high-rises.
But oil money also created fertile ground for corruption and created the conditions for human rights abuses and censorship by the country’s authoritarian government. Protesters, critics and reporters are often jailed.
Heydar Aliyev, who was appointed leader of the country in 1969 when it was still part of the Soviet Union, ruled until his death in 2003. His son, Ilham Aliyev, has since been president of Azerbaijan. (The Aliyevs were prominent characters in the Panama Papers, a 2016 corruption investigation.)
After the Soviet Union fell, the United States has heavily promoted investments in oil and gas pipelines in Azerbaijan to curb Russia’s influence.
Oil and optics
In recent years, Azerbaijan has organized international events, such as the Eurovision Song Contest, to strengthen its image. Natalie Koch, a professor of geography at Syracuse University who has spent the past 15 years researching the oil industry in the Caspian Sea, sees this year’s climate conference as part of that strategy.
As my colleague Max Bearak reported, Azerbaijan became the host of this year’s climate conference through a long and difficult process hampered in large part by Russian obstructionism.
The conference rotates between different regions, with Eastern Europe or the Caucasus as the highlight this year. Russia could essentially veto any candidate who opposed the war in Ukraine.
The candidate pool was narrowed to Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were at war against each other until last year. In exchange for Azerbaijan’s release of prisoners of war, Armenia dropped its opposition to Azerbaijan’s COP29 hosting bid.
The summit could highlight Europe’s continued dependence on oil and gas even as the region strives to lead the world on climate policy, Koch argued. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan’s gas exports to Europe gained in importance.
And even if there is an inevitable conflict in a petrostate hosting a climate summit, it may also be appropriate: the country where the oil industry began could also host negotiations that could one day end the petroleum age.
“It’s possible to think of it as a kind of closure,” Koch said.
The space race causes pollution problems
The number of rocket launches has soared in recent years as commercial companies — especially SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk — and government agencies have launched thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit. Now scientists are starting to worry that the new space race is spreading disturbing amounts of pollutants into pristine layers of the atmosphere.
Rocket exhaust pales in comparison to the exhaust fumes emitted by aviation. But scientists worry that even small additions to the stratosphere – home to the ozone layer, which protects us from the sun’s harmful radiation – will have major consequences.
In the short term, the launches could have a cooling effect on the atmosphere, similar to an erupting volcano, which creates sulfate aerosols. warming the stratosphere while preventing the heat from hitting the Earth’s surface. But scientists are also concerned that black carbon, or soot, could damage the ozone layer.
This is just the beginning. Ultimately, there could be as many as many a million satellites orbiting the planet, requiring an even greater number of space launches, which could lead to escalating emission levels. — Shannon Hall