COP 29: Ruffling Climate Feathers, Making Energy Inroads

Craig Rucker President of CFACT 

CFACT is at UN COP 29 in Azerbaijan where if the Left wants to give us the credit, we'll take it! 

• “One of the reasons why the COP hasn’t been as successful as it should be is because of people like Marc [Morano]. He and the oil industry have hijacked the process, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s not making further progress.”-  Grahame Buss, spokesman for Just Stop Oil, during a TV debate at COP29 in Baku.
• “People like Marc [and his organization CFACT] who have actually not allowed the real progress to be made.”  - Harjeet Singh, Director at Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty Initiative – During a live TV debate from COP29 in Baku

Such comments from our adversaries are high praise of Marc Morano’s and CFACT’s impact at these UN climate conferences. We wear such derision by the climate-hysteria cottage industry as a badge of honor.

Of course, this is not the first time we’ve been given backhanded praise by the political Left for our work at United Nations COP meetings. We’ve been called out by the media and others during prior climate summits in Indonesia, Peru, South Africa, and pretty much every other one. It is always good to hear reconfirmation of CFACT’s effectiveness at challenging the UN’s climate narrative. When you’re taking flak, it means you’re over the target.

So how do we do it? There’s a variety of ways, but in this latest example, I will call it “informal negotiations.”

Unless your organization is well-connected to a current presidential administration in power, (which CFACT is not while the lame-duck Biden crew remains), making an impact at a UN meeting like COP 29 is always a challenge for a conservative/libertarian NGO. But the nice thing about being accredited for attendance to the COP summits is that you are afforded opportunities to meet state delegates from other nations who often agree with our message – and those delegates carry our message into the proceedings.

Such rendezvous might occur inside the main plenary sessions, official side events, or other formal meetings that take place during a COP. After having covered these proceedings for more than two decades, the CFACT delegation has found that many of our best opportunities to make an impact occur while having meals at the hotel, sharing taxis to the event, or simply walking among the conference attendees at the venue outside the summit meetings.

This morning in Baku was a case in point. While eating breakfast at our Masazir New City Hotel, I had a chance to brush up on my French by conversing with a representative of the African nation of Togo. Her name was Bossa Makagni, and she was full of surprises.

She was supportive of the American people’s election of Donald Trump as president and said having a strong leader like him was important not just for America, but the world. She also told me she was weighing whether these COP meetings could help her country, and was happy to get information from CFACT, including exploring future projects such as our organization’s Stewardship in Action in several African and Asian developing nations.

Another encounter with an African COP representative this week occurred during my flight to Azerbaijan. His name was Dr. Patrick Kormawa, a representative of the nation of Sierra Leone. He also very much liked President Trump, and we met again during the conference at the COP 29 food court. Dr. Kormawa and CFACT have much in common. He understood that fossil fuels, hydro power, and especially nuclear power (not principally renewables, as is touted by the UN) are vital for African development. Our discussion at the summit was captured on film by a French News Team which was interested in the dialogue and plans to broadcast it.

It is not just nation’s delegates whom we influence at these meetings. While walking the streets of downtown Baku, CFACT Senior Fellow Peter Murphy and I encountered several U.S. college students who were attending COP 29 as observers. While shopping at the city’s tourist venues for souvenirs, they told us they were quite worried about their future and even felt great distress over what lies ahead for them and humanity because of climate change. 

This was a great opportunity, so we gave them a little primer on why hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and heatwaves are neither unprecedented, nor raging out of control. We informed them of various predictions made by the UN IPCC and climate advocates that never came true, and then urged them to look into the facts and not just believe what they are told at the conference or by their university professors. They seemed genuinely relieved to talk to us, and we parted company — but not before taking time to haggle over and buy some Baku store items with vendors.

Progress is clearly being made as we push back against the pervasive climate narrative . More people are having their eyes opened as CFACT corrects the record with data and sources to substantiate.  President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming Administration, delegations from other nations, our ever growing reach of media outlets, and our impact with college students, all are reassured that their future is promising, and the planet will endure. Information is being shared. Public education is occurring. Media interviews are being conducted with outlets around the world. And the CFACT message of sound science, economics and conservation is getting out.

Twenty years ago the climate establishment attempted to to shun CFACT as pariahs.  We still encounter that, but less so today. We find delegates praising Donald Trump, touting nuclear power and oil and gas (like the President of Azerbaijan did yesterday), and delegates completely amenable to receiving materials from climate realists to distribute to their delegations. Good things are happening. We are having a serious impact.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll see those young students we talked to a CFACT Collegians program soon! They would be following a long line of CFACT Collegians who proceeded them.

For nature and people too!

P.S.  Thank you to everyone who has given so generously to make it possible for CFACT to be your representatives in the UN climate process.  There is much more to do and we can't keep going without support from friends like you.  Please make the strongest gift you can right now.