PROTESTERS hit out at oil giant BP “hijacking” Cop29 while profiting from the genocide in Gaza as the international climate summit kicked off in Azerbaijan today.

Palestine and climate campaigners protested outside the firm’s London headquarters as world leaders headed the latest round of international climate talks.

As the UN warned 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record, Fossil Free London activists held a banner reading “BP, stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown.”

They demanded BP stop its oil and gas extraction, “hijacking” the Conference of the Parties (Cop) process in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and “profiteering from genocide.”

Israel receives about 30 per cent of its oil from Azerbaijan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.

It is majority owned by BP, with the second largest shareholder is SOCAR — the Azerbaijani national oil company.

Human rights experts have warned that countries and corporations supplying oil to Israeli armed forces may be complicit in war crimes and genocide following an International Court of Justice ruling on Israel.

Joanna Warrington, a campaigner with Fossil Free London, said: “It’s the very same fossil fuel giants that profit from the suffering of billions as our climate tips closer to collapse, which are fuelling and enabling Israel’s horrific colonial genocide.

“This is all playing out right in front of our world leaders, who sit clapping in the audience instead of standing up to protect human rights and life. 

“Climate crisis and genocide are being made and supported here in London.

“Our global political processes are being polluted by corporations like BP that continue to tear up our society so that the resultant blood flow can carry massive profits to them.” 

Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said: “The struggle to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza is inextricably linked with issues of climate justice.

“Israel’s actions in Gaza have rightly been labelled as ‘ecocide’ among other things, as they deliberately seek to destroy the conditions for Palestinian life in their own land.

“Corporations like BP directly support Israel’s war machine by providing fuel for its bombers, tanks and other military equipment.

“They are complicit in Israel’s genocide and their profits are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

“The global community can never make progress on issues of justice and environmental protection until companies like BP are forced to account for their crimes, not have a seat at the table of Cop29.”

The London demonstration is part of an international campaign co-ordinated by Energy Embargo for Palestine, Filistin Icin 1000 Genc and the Palestinian-led Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.

It comes as part of a series of actions on the intersections of Cop29, the climate crisis and Palestine in London, culminating in the March for Global Climate Justice this Saturday. 

Cop29 president is Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Mukhtar Babyev, who has spent 26 years working in SOCAR — which recently agreed with BP to expand its oil and gas partnership exploring new fields to drill.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has been involved in lobbying for the BTC oil pipeline in Azerbaijan and BP’s operations in Iraq following his invasion, has also sought to assist in running the climate summit.

As the conference kicked off in Baku today, the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation issued a “red alert” over the speed of climate change in a single generation as it warned this year would break 2023’s record temperatures.

The WMO said the global average temperature for January to September 2024 was 1.54°C above pre-industrial levels, based on analysis from six global datasets.

This breaches a key threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures to which countries have committed to limit global warming to avoid its worst impacts, though the WMO said it did not mean the world had failed to meet the goal over the long-term.

World leaders from around 200 nations are due to appear over the next two weeks at the conference in the oil-producing nation.

Today US climate envoy John Podesta said work to tackle climate change will continue in the US “with commitment and passion and belief” in the wake of climate change sceptic Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

A particular focus for Cop29 will be how countries plan to limit long-term global temperature rises to the Paris Agreement 2015 target of 1.5°C.