How COP29 Became a Playground for Oil Giants in the Name of Climate Change
Can we believe in climate justice when oil money runs the show?
The Business Centre on Baku’s Central Boulevard is brand spanking new. This gleaming 13-story tower where the next UN climate conference, COP29, will take place sits just a few miles from the neighborhood formerly known as Black City, the birthplace of the global oil industry in the 1840s.
Because, believe it or not, Baku was the world’s first oil town.
There are still oil wells in Baku, their piston pumps nodding in rhythm while the flares of refineries stand out clearly against the night-time skyline. Today, fossil fuels still make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports: the petrostate pioneer is one of the top 10 most oil- and gas-dependent economies in the world.
Gone, though, are the black-stained buildings that gave the Black City its nickname: Every house and factory was once thickly stained with soot from the oil that was extracted and refined here by the shores of the Caspian Sea. In the past two decades, an intensive cleanup operation has turned central Baku into White City, where Soviet-era blocks have been reclad in gleaming beige facades.
