Al Gore calls for reform of COP climate process

“I think the process should be reformed,” Gore said of the COP summit process in an exclusive interview with Euronews in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.

“I think it's absurd to have, for example, what we had last year with the CEO of one of the dirtiest oil companies on the planet serving as the president of the COP,” he said in reference to the 2023 climate summit in Dubai.

“It’s a direct conflict of interest,” he continued, arguing that the problem persists this year with Azerbaijan taking over the COP presidency.

“While the president of this COP was not the head of the oil industry, he is very much in sync with this country's reliance on fossil fuels,” Gore said. “Ninety per cent of their balance of payments is coming from the sale of oil and gas.”

Mukhtar Babayev, appointed Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources in 2018 after a career spanning two decades with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar), was named in January to preside over this year’s COP.

Gore pointed to Russia, which had vetoed the idea of any EU country hosting the talks, as the driving force behind the selection of Azerbaijan, which falls within the broadly defined eastern European region that was in line for the presidency this year.

“As the loudest voice in this region of the world … it was really Russia that made this choice,” said Gore, whose climate activism since narrowly losing the US presidential election in 2020 saw him share the Nobel Peace Prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

Gore spoke to Euronews shortly before hosting an event with the Climate Reality Project that he founded back in 2006 and which he still chairs.

“One of the reforms that I have proposed is to give the [UN]