“No country is undertaking a transformation towards a low-energy economy”

Decryption As climate negotiations open in Baku, Azerbaijan, oil and gas companies are on the offensive. However, any new drilling project should be stopped immediately to hope to limit global warming.

In 1873, when he arrived in Baku, on the borders of the Russian Empire, Robert Nobel had 25,000 rubles in his pocket and a few scores to settle. Heir to a family of Swedish industrialists, he has until now remained in the shadow of his brothers, including that of the famous Alfred Nobel, chemist and inventor of dynamite. The sum was entrusted to him to buy wood, but in front of this so-called land “of fire”which is full of gigantic oil reserves, he decides to invest in a refinery. The exploitation of black gold is launched. Easy to transport, store and use, oil has become the lifeblood of our economies: it fuels all the vital organs of our societies, from transport to agriculture. It is also the skin: it is essential for the manufacture of plastic, from which our packaging and our clothing are made. With a huge downside: the greenhouse gas emissions that its combustion generates.

A century and a half after the adventures of Robert Nobel, while global temperatures continue to rise – the UN warned at the end of October of the risk of global warming “catastrophic” of 3.1°C – it is in Baku, cradle of the oil industry and capital of the rich dictatorship of Azerbaijan, that COP29 is being held. For the second year in a row – after COP28 in Dubai – the United Nations climate negotiations, supposedly…