The president of the nation hosting a major climate summit has praised oil and gas as a “gift of God”.
Azerbaijan leader Ilham Aliyev also accused western nations of “double standards” for buying fossil fuels from his country while urging the world to go green.
His comments, at the COP29 summit in Baku, came as Keir Starmer pledged that the UK would ramp up its efforts to slash carbon emissions.
Under the proposal, Britain would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases it pumps into the atmosphere to 81% of 1990 levels by 2035.
But that promise is likely to be overshadowed by Aliyev’s outspoken comments.
In his speech to the summit, the Azerbaijani president said oil and gas were “a gift of God” like any other natural resource.
“Countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them,” he said. “The people need them.”
In another section of his speech, he said: “Unfortunately double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries.”
His comments are a major blow to the COP29 summit, which has already been criticised after it was snubbed by many other world leaders.
Unveiling the UK’s new climate target at the summit, Starmer said: “We set out the target, which is an important, ambitious target, what we are not going to do is start telling people how to live their lives.
“We are not going to start dictating to people what they do. But we are going to be clear that that involves hitting the clean power 2030 mission that we have set out, one of the five big projects of the Government.
“That is vital, so we will hit that, it is an ambitious target, it is a realisable target, but it is not going to be one in which we tell people how to live their lives.”
Asked if he was disappointed other world leaders had not attended COP29, Starmer said the UK was at the summit to “show leadership”.