Hungary COP29 Climate Delegates Linked to State Oil Company

The Climate Policy Institute attending the UN summit was founded by a state-backed think tank which has received fossil fuel funding.
Adam Barnett - new white crop
on
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbรกn addresses delegates at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Credit: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Live News

A Hungarian โ€œclimate instituteโ€ attending COP29 is an offshoot of an Orbรกn-backed think tank funded by the state oil and gas company. 

Nine delegates from the Climate Policy Institute (CPI) were down to attend the United Nations climate summit, now in its second week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

According to the official UN list, CPI director Mรณnika Besenyei, head of secretariat Csilla Gajer, three researchers and three โ€œstudentsโ€ all attended as part of Hungaryโ€™s โ€œoverflowโ€ delegation.  

A spokesperson told DeSmog the institute was one of โ€œmany other NGOsโ€ at the summit, and that they had โ€œhosted events in collaboration with the UN, making us contracted partners of the global organizationโ€.

Despite this significant delegation at the summit, and its stated mission โ€œto promote nature-loving, nature-friendly practicesโ€, DeSmog can reveal the CPI has ties to the Hungarian fossil fuel industry, and has promoted some of the worldโ€™s best-known opponents of climate action. 

Its senior representatives have also attacked climate targets as โ€œideologicalโ€ and likened climate advocates to a religious sect. 

The CPI was set up in 2020 by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a conservative think tank which received ยฃ1.3 billion from the Hungarian state that year. MCC was also given a ten percent stake in the countryโ€™s multinational oil and gas company MOL.

MCC has been criticised as a tool of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbรกnโ€™s efforts to promote his governmentโ€™s ideas and interests around the world. Its chair, Orbรกnโ€™s political director Balรกzs Orbรกn (no relation), has said: โ€œIt is our goal for Hungary to become an intellectual powerhouse, in which MCC plays a key role.โ€

Hungaryโ€™s list of delegates at COP29 also include Viktor Sverla, vice president of MOL, and Attila Somfai, managing director of MOL Azerbaijan. Prime minister Orbรกn, one of only a few European Union leaders attending the flagship climate talks, used his platform last week to argue for the continued use of oil and gas. 

The worldโ€™s leading climate scientists have said that no new oil and gas projects should be approved if emissions are to be cut enough to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

At least 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to COP29 this year, more than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined. Last week DeSmog revealed that oil and gas companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies had spent tens of thousands of dollars to sponsor events at the summit via a business lobby group.ย 

Climate Policy Institute

The CPI describes itself as a think tank which โ€œfocus[es] on action and solutions, rather than scaremongering and climate change anxietyโ€. 

Its website adds: โ€œWe also look at global issues through Hungarian eyes. In environmental protection, local values are as important as international climate agreements, quotas and summits.โ€

While it claims to support tackling climate change, the CPI has boosted the work of prominent opponents of climate action. 

In March 2022, the CPI held an event in Budapest with Danish writer Bjorn Lomborg, to promote his 2020 book โ€œFalse Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planetโ€. 

Lomborg has regularly downplayed the impact of climate change. In an article for the Wall Street Journal last year titled โ€œClimate change hasnโ€™t set the world on fireโ€, Lomborg cited a decline in the scope of wildfires worldwide since 2001 โ€“ despite rising temperatures making wildfires more likely and more destructive, according to experts. 

In November 2021, the CPI held a launch event for the Hungarian edition of Michael Shellenbergerโ€™s book โ€˜Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All โ€™, which MCC helped publish. 

In a 2020 cover piece for Forbes, which was later retracted by the magazine, Shellenberger apologised โ€œon behalf of environmentalists everywhereโ€ for what he called โ€œthe climate scareโ€, and claimed that โ€œclimate change is not making natural disasters worseโ€. 

Gergely Kitta, head of institutes at MCC and head of communications at Climate Policy Institute, said: โ€œThe Climate Policy Institute firmly believes that tackling climate change is one of humanityโ€™s most critical challenges. However, we remain critical of certain mainstream policies currently being promoted.

โ€œWe found Bjorn Lomborgโ€™s perspective thought-provoking, particularly his argument that investing in poverty alleviation is essential to fostering greater public awareness of climate change.

โ€œSimilarly, Michael Shellenbergerโ€™s emphasis on the pivotal role of nuclear energy in achieving net-zero goals, as acknowledged by the IPCC [Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change], IEA [International Energy Agency], and OECD, was of significant interest to us.โ€

Net Zero โ€˜Ideological Purityโ€™

The CPI has also attacked the UKโ€™s climate policies. The groupโ€™s director, Callum Nicholson, is also director of the Danube Institute, another Hungarian think tank which has received government funding via the non-profit Batthyรกny Lajos Foundation (BLA). 

Danube Institute president John Oโ€™Sullivan โ€“ who was a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher โ€“ wrote in 2021 that climate change is not happening as quickly as scientists say, citing the work of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UKโ€™s main climate denial group. 

In June, Nicholson argued that the UKโ€™s target to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 was โ€œputting an ideological agenda ahead of realitiesโ€, and that the Labour governmentโ€™s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences was part of an โ€œaspiration to purityโ€ in a climate movement which he likened to โ€œmillenarianโ€ religious sects. 

The UKโ€™s legally-binding 2050 net zero target is based on climate scientistsโ€™ recommendations for limiting global temperatures to 1.5C, as set out in the Paris Agreement. 

Nicholson was speaking on a podcast called Deprogrammed run by the New Culture Forum, a conservative think tank based at 55 Tufton Street, a hub of anti-regulation lobby groups including the GWPF. 

The CPI promoted the episode on its website, describing it as a discussion about โ€œthe politicization of science by managerial elites at the global and national level and why Labour leader Kier [sic] Starmer’s World Economic Forum agenda will ruin Britain.โ€ 

The idea that the World Economic Forum, a talking shop with no power to make policy, is behind climate policies has become a common feature of conspiracy theories since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to experts at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue. 

MCC and the Danube Institute are involved in National Conservatism, a right-wing initiative which has held conferences attended by lawmakers and activists. 

The two groups sponsored the NatCon event held in Brussels in April, and attended by Orbรกn, former UK home secretary Suella Braverman and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage

Adam Barnett - new white crop
Adam Barnett is DeSmog's UK News Reporter. He is a former Staff Writer at Left Foot Forward and BBC Local Democracy Reporter.

Related Posts

on

Canadian environmentalist Tzeporah Berman makes the case for a "bold idea" to end the era of coal, oil and gas.

Canadian environmentalist Tzeporah Berman makes the case for a "bold idea" to end the era of coal, oil and gas.
on

Jeremy Clarkson spreads well-worn conspiracy theory that casts inheritance farm tax policy as plot to โ€œreplace farmers with migrantsโ€.

Jeremy Clarkson spreads well-worn conspiracy theory that casts inheritance farm tax policy as plot to โ€œreplace farmers with migrantsโ€.
on

Premier Danielle Smith declared sheโ€™s pursuing โ€˜every legal optionโ€™ in her fight against Trudeauโ€™s federal proposal to curb emissions.

Premier Danielle Smith declared sheโ€™s pursuing โ€˜every legal optionโ€™ in her fight against Trudeauโ€™s federal proposal to curb emissions.
on

With fracking CEO Wright tapped to serve in Trumpโ€™s cabinet, Lomborgโ€™s influence could extend into the highest levels of the U.S. government.

With fracking CEO Wright tapped to serve in Trumpโ€™s cabinet, Lomborgโ€™s influence could extend into the highest levels of the U.S. government.