A former executive of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas firm SOCAR has been picked to lead U.N. climate talks in Baku later this year, prompting critics to decry a “bad case of déjà vu.” Mukhtar Babayev, who serves as Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural resources minister, was named Thursday by the COP28 United Arab Emirates presidency as the COP29 president-designate. Babayev will take over from Sultan Al-Jaber, who was seen as a controversial choice to lead COP28 talks in Dubai late last year given that he also works as the head of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. It means that a minister with vast e ... (full story)