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AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to turn right now to President-elect Trump’s pick for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the well-known TV personality. CMS is the agency that oversees health coverage for 150 million people, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Last week, Trump picked the prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head HHS. Dr. Oz unsuccessfully ran for the Senate from Pennsylvania in 2022, backer of privatizing Medicare.

We are joined right now by Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

In these two minutes we have left, Dr. Steinbrook, talk about the significance of Oz, if he’s approved, to head CMS.

DR. ROBERT STEINBROOK: Well, thank you for having me.

It’s a strange choice. Dr. Oz is a physician, which is good, but his background really has nothing to do with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It touches half the country in terms of providing medical care. It’s a complex bureaucratic organization, which also has regulatory structures. Dr. Oz is a celebrity physician. He’s promoted various treatments and supplements of dubious value. But that’s really not what CMS is about. It’s not the FDA. And it remains to be seen how he could be effective in this position if he’s confirmed.

The one thing I’ll mention is that Dr. Oz, specific to CMS is, he’s a supporter Medicare Advantage and increasing privatization of Medicare. Medicare Advantage already covers about 54% of people under Medicare. And we think that’s the wrong way to go. We’d like to see traditional Medicare strengthened so that there will be a level playing field. Medicare Advantage often overcharges the federal government. And strengthening it, making it even more lucrative for private insurers, is not the way to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Robert Steinbrook, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Public Citizen Health Research Group director.

And that does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with a remarkable team: Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Hana Elias and Denis Moynihan. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, David Prude, Dennis McCormick, Matt Ealy, Anna Özbek, Emily Andersen.

To continue to watch our coverage of COP29 here in Baku, Azerbaijan — we’ll be here for the whole week — go to democracynow.org. Tomorrow is Women’s Day here at the U.N. summit, and we’ll be bringing you women from around the world. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

We end today’s show looking at President-elect Trump’s latest nominees. Trump has nominated billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education, which Trump has pledged to shut down. McMahon is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. She headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She gave at least $15 million to a pro-Trump PAC during this election.

She and her husband Vince McMahon were recently sued for failing to stop a WWE ringside announcer from sexually assaulting young boys. Vince McMahon also has been sued by a former WWE employee who accused him of sexual assault and of trafficking her to other men.

We’re joined now by the education historian Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush.

Diane Ravitch, thanks so much for joining us. In these few minutes we have with you, talk about this latest nomination by President-elect Trump. Talk about McMahon.

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, I had to learn about her, because she is not someone who’s been engaged in the field of education at all. She led the Small Business Administration in the previous Trump term. President-elect Trump has a habit of choosing people who have either a desire to destroy the department or who have no experience. She falls into the latter category: She does not have any experience in education, although she spent one year on a Connecticut state Board of Education, but, otherwise, she’s a businesswoman. She would have been well qualified to head the Commerce Department, and apparently that’s the job she wanted.

But her job now, according to Project 2025 and everything that Trump has said, is to eliminate the Department of Education. She is not qualified to run the department, because she doesn’t know anything about it. And it’s hard to say whether or not Congress will go along with the president’s desire. He cannot single-handedly abolish the Department of Education. This is something that has to be done, if at all, by Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you something. She gave more than $7 million to two pro-Trump super PACs in 2016, as well, this year, gave $10 million to the Make America Great Again PAC. President Trump says, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.” What would it mean if the Department of Education were shut down?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, what Project 2025 says is that they’re going to block grant all the federal funding. What that means is that they will take whatever money is currently going to the states, send it to the states with no strings. So, right now when a state gets money for Title I, it goes to schools that have a lot of poor children. When they get money for children with disabilities, it goes to schools that have children with disabilities. With the block granting, which is what they have in mind, there would be no strings attached. They could divert that money for other purposes.

So, Project 2025 says that at some point the federal funding would simply stop. And they’re really saying to the states, “We’re going to take away your federal funding. Here it is. You can have it now. But eventually it will dry up, and you’ll have to take care of your own federal moneys — or, not federal moneys, make it up from state moneys.” What that means is basically going back to 1965, where there were vast inequities among the states, which was the reason for passing federal aid to education. It was an equity measure. And that equity measure will be wiped out.

AMY GOODMAN: A final question. This from The New York Times: She’s “played an influential role in laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency as the chair of the America First Policy Institute,” which “has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from ‘promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts’ [quote-unquote] about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding” voucher programs. She has always talked about being pro-choice, not in terms of abortion, but in terms of privatizing schools.

DIANE RAVITCH: That’s, unfortunately, continuing a trend that started long ago under, I guess, Reagan, although Reagan was not able to do anything to make it happen. But choice got embedded into No Child Left Behind, with the charter school movement, and then the charter school movement turned into the voucher movement, and now about half of the states — almost all of them red states — do have voucher programs. And these voucher programs enroll children who are predominantly well-to-do. They’re not helping kids who are poor. Most of the kids who take vouchers never attended a public school. So, the voucher program is a subsidy for kids who are already in private and religious schools, and it’s been a tremendous boon for religious schools. And when you add that to the Supreme Court having lowered the bar for religious — for sending public money to religious institutions, we’re heading towards a wipeout for the wall of separation between church and state. I think that when Linda McMahon — 

AMY GOODMAN: Education historian Diane Ravitch, I want to thank you — I want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to have to leave it there. We’re going to continue to look at this, former assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush.

AMY GOODMAN: As we broadcast from the U.N. climate summit here in Baku, Azerbaijan, we continue to look at the brutal crackdown on human rights activists, government critics and the press. In the months ahead of hosting COP29, the Azerbaijani government arrested a number of independent journalists, including three women journalists with the outlet Abzas Media, who said they were assaulted earlier this month at a Baku jail while awaiting trial. Since November of last year, at least six journalists with Abzas have been arrested.

For more, we’re going to Berlin, where we’re joined by Leyla Mustafayeva, acting editor-in-chief of Abzas Media. The online news site has been working out of Berlin due to the crackdown here in Azerbaijan.

Leyla, thank you for joining us. You can see that the deputy foreign minister was not willing to talk about the crackdown here. But talk about first what have happened to the women journalists — well, all six journalists of Abzas in this lead-up to the COP.

LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Thank you for having me on the program.

So, actually, the total crackdown on Azerbaijani media started recently, last year in November. Our news organization, Abzas Media, was targeted massively, and six of our journalists, including director Ulvi Hasanli; Sevinj Vagifgizi, editor-in-chief; and two brave journalists, Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova; also the project manager, Mahammad Kekalov; and including the investigative journalist Hafiz Babali was detained on fabricated charges. These journalists are accused in smuggling foreign currency into the country. And they are facing right now from eight to 12 years’ imprisonment, because in late August this year, the investigator has aggravated the case and added seven more criminal charges against the journalists.

And they are still in jail since one year, just detained one year ahead of COP, and facing harassment and death threats in jail, as well. Just a few months ago, our director, Ulvi Hasanli, was threatened with death just for making the torture cases public from the prison where he is kept. And also our three brave female journalists — Sevinj Vagifgizi, Nargiz Absalamova and also Elnara Gasimova — have faced violence just a few days ahead of COP in a prison which is just kilometers away from the COP venue.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m asking you, Leyla, about the decision to host the COP29 here. Abzas also conducted investigations looking at who in the Azerbaijani government has benefited from hosting the COP here in Baku.

LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Yes, they did. Actually, our journalists have been detained for these corruption investigations that they were doing on those here. It was the only media outlet carrying out systematic corruption investigations in the country. But for now, it was not just to intervene to jail these journalists ahead of COP, because they were going to ask critical questions, those state officials who is attending in COP29 conference in Baku, including Yalchin Rafiyev, deputy foreign minister, who is lead negotiator of COP29 from Azerbaijan. In one of our investigations, we found out that Yalchin Rafiyev’s brother has lucratively won the tenders related to reconstruction in Karabakh, despite the fact that the company has violated — had violated the environmental regulations. But it could be just one of the questions that our journalists could ask, if they would be in freedom and could attend in COP29 conference, as well.

But in general, this is an event that Azerbaijani authorities are greenwashing their image, because this is a conference — this is a country which the export of the country heavily relies on fossil fuels, namely gas and oil. And additionally, it was a good opportunity for Azerbaijani authorities just to have a lot of fossil fuel lobbyists in order to have a lot of contracts focused on oil exportation.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a few minutes, and I want to quickly ask you about the women at your news organization. Three of them have said that they were brutalized in pretrial detention in a Baku jail. Can you explain what happened, who they were?

LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Just a few days ago, they were oppressed by the prison guardians due to this instruction coming from the prison governor. They just wanted to have fresh air in the cells where they are kept. They just stretched their hands out of the prison — small prison door window in order to make sure that the door is not closed and all the women who have health problems in jail with them to have fresh air. So, you know, the kind of topics related to air pollution or environmental issues are discussed in COP29 conference, but our journalists, they can’t just mail or receive a fresh air in the prison.

AMY GOODMAN: Leyla, in my last question to you, in June of 2023, Abzas journalists were arrested for investigating the Gedabek gold mine in western Azerbaijan. A consortium of reporters led by Forbidden Stories later continued their investigation, which found that gold from Azerbaijan is brought to Europe and sold to tech giants like Apple, Tesla and Microsoft. This is a clip.

NARRATOR: In June 2023, protests in Azerbaijan were violently crushed. Journalists capturing and publishing footage of these events were arrested, imprisoned, and even threatened with rape. A few months later, Abzas Media journalists who had covered these demonstrations were arrested again. To this day, they are still detained. In the meantime, Forbidden Stories took over their investigations to tell the stories they could no longer pursue. This investigation has led us to some of the biggest names in tech and banking.

LAURENT RICHARD: We’re talking about Microsoft, Tesla and other giants of the tech or the industry. I’m not sure they are aware about what’s going on in the mine where they are buying the gold through the refinery.

AMY GOODMAN: Another person mentioned in this Forbidden Stories documentary is John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, the father of the current governor, Chris Sununu. John Sununu also served as President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff. He’s one of the shareholders in Anglo Asian Mining, AAM, a gold-mining company in Azerbaijan. What did Abzas Media discover about the work of this mining company, in this last 60 seconds we have?

LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: One of our journalists, Nargiz Absalamova, was covering the protest which broke out related to gold mining and construction of cyanide lake in this village, which is actually put under police control currently. The Abzas Media covered this protest and was going also to hold an independent water and soil test in order to see whether this complaint coming from the residents is true or not. But they were jailed, unfortunately, and they couldn’t just carry out independent tests in order to find out whether the soil and air was polluted with cyanide or not. They are just jailed. And it was one of the purposes just to silence the journalists to prevent them from doing further investigations related to this gold mine in western province in Azerbaijan.

AMY GOODMAN: Leyla Mustafayeva, thank you so much for being with us, acting editor-in-chief of the award-winning Azerbaijani independent media outlet Abzas Media. The online news site has been working from outside Azerbaijan since six of its journalists were arrested and imprisoned in the lead-up to this climate summit. Leyla was speaking to us from Berlin, Germany.

Coming up, Donald Trump has picked the former head of World Wrestling Entertainment to be secretary of education and Dr. Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He is a backer of privatizing Medicare. Back in 20 seconds.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. We begin today’s show with Colombia’s Minister of Environment Susana Muhamad, who’s held the position since 2022, when the government of the President Gustavo Petro took office. Muhamad is Colombia’s lead climate negotiator here at COP29. I asked for her response to Donald Trump’s reelection.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk about the significance of Donald Trump being reelected president in the United States? He says he will once again pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes, it is absolutely a disaster for global climate, because, of course, you know, the U.S. is one of the big emitters in the world and has a big responsibility. So, so far, if the U.S. pulls out, I think there’s still consequences. One, it will create a vacuum for other countries to take their place, its place. And I see, for example, China very committed to multilateralism and ready to hopefully step in. But secondly, something that is more and more —

AMY GOODMAN: It would be a big deal, because China is now the largest polluter. I mean, U.S. is historically.

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes, exactly, historically, but, in any case, are the countries that have more economic capacity and commitment for starting the decarbonization first and bringing emissions down globally. I mean, if China and the U.S. don’t do anything on this, we can all do a lot, but the problem will not be solved.

Now, secondly, I think we have to reflect further, and it’s because this trend of the far right coming to power is not only in the U.S. We have seen that happening in Europe. We have seen that in Latin America. Actually, the Argentinian government pulled out also the delegation. And what is the deeper reflection? That these transitions have to take into account the most vulnerable people in the planet. The people have to feel that this ecological and economic transition will improve their quality of life. So far, we are not doing that, because we are still in this liberal economy playing the same rules of the game, neoliberalism, and what’s happening is that masses of population are just left behind. And that’s the perfect — the perfect condition for right-wing populists to come and put the environment against the people, which is actually an environmental and a social disaster, and to sell that actually fossil fuels and the old way of development is the answer, which actually is a total trap because what it has created is a lot of inequality, as we know.

So, the call Colombia is also making here is that the just transition is not a game, that the finance needs to come also to developing countries, and that everywhere we have to put the most vulnerable people and the people that are on the frontline of climate change for inclusion; otherwise, we actually create the risk of political backlash on climate, as we are actually seeing.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you shocked when Trump won?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: It is a big call. It’s a big call of progressives everywhere that neoliberal economics is actually creating a bigger monster. And we have to create an alternative model that really, really includes and improves the quality of life of the most vulnerable.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Colombia’s minister of environment, chair of the U.N. climate delegation for Colombia here in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29. I also had a chance to sit down with Susana Muhamad for an in-depth interview to look at how Colombia President Gustavo Petro’s administration has made climate issues central to its agenda. Colombia’s Vice President Francia Márquez is a longtime Afro-Colombian environmentalist, who’s long fought for the protection of land and natural resources, while President Petro has halted the approval of new oil drilling projects and has vowed to phase out fossil fuels in Colombia, the oil-rich nation. The Petro administration has also led efforts to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Last year, Colombia became the first major fossil fuel-producing nation to join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty coalition, setting a path toward an ambitious energy transition.

Colombia has also just hosted the U.N. biodiversity summit, known as COP16, in the city of Cali. The summit concluded earlier this month without a much sought-after agreement on funding by wealthy countries. But some good news emerged from the summit, as well, concluding a measure establishing a permanent Indigenous consulting body at the U.N. to weigh in on conservation issues.

This all comes as Colombia earlier this year banned all coal exports to Israel over its devastating war on Gaza. Colombia is the world’s sixth-largest coal exporter.

Minister Muhamad was born in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, is of Palestinian descent. I began by asking her thoughts on the status of this year’s climate negotiations here in Baku so far.

SUSANA MUHAMAD: We are in a very difficult discussion, a very difficult negotiation. We are seeing two trends. Right now the whole negotiation is up in the air. We don’t have concrete texts, and it has gone now to the political level. One of the trends is actually the initiative of some countries to come backwards from the decisions made in Dubai one year ago, especially on the issue of transitioning away from fossil fuels. Other countries, like the Latin American countries under the negotiating group of AILAC, are pushing back so that we don’t go backwards in that aim of transitioning away from fossil fuels. So, otherwise, we are not moving forward. And this is a financial COP. This means that the goal for finance for the next 10 years on the climate convention will be established. But there is a very polarized and difficult environment for negotiation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about Colombia’s stance, I mean, even the fact that it’s the first oil country to join the fossil-free treaty.

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes. We have run scenarios for Colombia in this transition for the future. In 15 years, our coal markets — and we have to remember, everybody, we are the fifth-largest exporter of coal in the world, and our economy depends on the export of fossil fuels. So, for us, the transition is not only an energy transition, it’s a whole economy transition. How are we going to replace the fiscal incomes that are happening from the export of fossil fuels, and also, what are the other sectors of the economy that will be replacing them? So, for us, it’s an environmental stand, but it’s also a very pragmatic stand, because what we foresee in the future 15 years from now is that our markets will be closing, and we need an alternative.

But we need a planned transition. And right now the financial system and the current economic situation is not helping Colombia in that aim. And that’s why we have put this process forward. And the fossil fuel treaty is about a call from 14 countries — we hope to be 25 countries in the near future — so that we have rules of the game that create conditions for that transition, and not that we play by the current rules, which are actually very unequal and will punish the transition that Colombia wants to make.

And that’s why, actually, the reality is we are expanding fossil fuels in the world. We are making — tripling renewables, but at the same time we’re expanding fossil fuels. So we are not dealing, we are not tackling, really, the climate problem, and we are creating more energy capacity. We are not using renewables to replace fossil fuels. And this is a big problem. And the reason is we haven’t created the economic conditions for that economic transition.

AMY GOODMAN: So, here at the U.N. climate summit, it might surprise many to know that the largest delegation is not Colombia’s or the United States or any other country. The largest grouping of people here are the oil and gas lobbyists. So, how can this be a successful summit? And what kind of pressure are you under?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: That’s true. Like, the legitimacy of the COP process had been affected in the last three, four COPs by two factors. One, the summit is every time closing and closing more to democratic participation. Actually, what we showed in COP16 of biodiversity in Cali is that you can have a people’s COP. You can have a COP where people from all walks of life, and especially the ones that are in the frontlines of the problem, have a voice, as we were able, for example, to approve the subsidiary body on Indigenous peoples. This is not happening in the climate COP. On the contrary, the climate COP is closing, closing, closing, and the corporate interests are more manifest all the time.

And I think Brazil, the next COP, which will be again in Latin America, has a very strong mandate to open democratically the COP process again, so we regain legitimacy and we actually — it’s not that the fossil fuel industry cannot be here, because it is one of the key actors, but it cannot dominate and cannot be the one that has privileged access to the summit. And this is happening right now. And, of course, part of the discussion here is that some of the fossil fuel producers, especially in the Arab world, are really pushing so that we go one step back from what we achieved in Dubai, that was the acceptance of the COP process in climate that we needed to transition away from fossil fuels.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about Colombia’s record when it comes to being the deadliest country for environmentalists and land defenders. Last year, a record 79 were killed, according to the U.K. advocacy group Global Witness. How has this impacted Colombia’s transition to peace after nearly half a century of war, and impacted progress around the climate?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Actually, it is very correlated. The increase of murders of environment defendants is actually happening exactly in the departments where or the territories where we are working to consolidate the peace process and we are dealing with dissidents of FARC and illicit economies. So, it’s the presence of those factors and the process of stabilization after the peace agreement that is increasing the murders.

We have talked extensively to Global Witness about the list. We actually accept the result. And we are working hard by signing the Escazú Agreement, which is a Latin American agreement to defend environmental defenders and to put in a policy of human rights that defends them. But we are also facing this challenge of the transition from the peace process and illicit economies. And it’s one of the most critical aspects, because we really believe that it is communities on the ground, in the field, that can make a difference on the climate transition. And if their leadership is inhibited and murdered by these illicit economies, by this struggle that we are having in the territory, of course, we cannot advance in our climate goals as we will — we should.

AMY GOODMAN: The theme of this summit is finance. Colombia’s $40 billion climate investment plan is described as a test case for transition finance. What key lessons do you hope the international community takes from Colombia’s approach, your country’s approach? You are the head of the delegation here.

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes. We are putting forward something that we call “No Excuse Plan,” because many people say countries don’t have the capacity. Developing countries, you know, cannot access finance. We have the capacity to put this plan. We have a plan and a strategic vision of how to empower other economic sectors to replace oil and gas. We are doing the hard work of internal consultations with all the sectors. We are putting the numbers together.

Now we want the international community to step in, because we are very clear. The Colombian government, the Colombian society, a critical mass of it, is ready to put this part, but we cannot do this alone. We cannot be fair in doing this climate action with access to capital at 10%, when developed countries have access to capital to 1%, when we are almost about to lose our investment qualification, risk qualification. And we are a highly indebted country, but we are not standing still and saying, “Oh, because of these conditions, we cannot do the transition.” On the opposite, we are very proactive. We have strategic vision. We know that this climate transition can be also an economic opportunity for the country. But we are putting all this so that international finance step in and create the condition. And we can show that a country that is in this situation can make a fair and just transition and actually can contribute to climate at the same time.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, I wanted to ask you, Susana Muhamad — you were born in Bogotá, Colombia, Colombian of Palestinian descent. And I wanted to get your response to the activism here at this summit around a global energy embargo against Israel for its war on Gaza. The other day, we were passing a protest, and this is one of the organizers of the protest, Hamza Hamouchene, an organizer with the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine, a Palestinian-led campaign. He spoke to us Monday at a protest here at COP29 during a protest supporting the embargo.

HAMZA HAMOUCHENE: Colombia was the biggest exporter of coal to Israel, and President Petro decided in the last few months to ban that export. So, we need to escalate our campaigning, the pressure on these countries and on Brazil, as well. Brazil is going to host the COP30 next year, but still it exports oil to the genocidal regime. So, these things need to stop. These are our demands.

AMY GOODMAN: Colombia has proposed a coal embargo against Israel because of what’s happening in Palestine right now. Can you talk about this?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes. It was a decision from President Petro on the call of Palestinians in the world. We realized that the Colombian coal was fueling 70% of Israel’s energy capabilities. So, Colombia had — the president, Petro, has signed a decree to forbid the export of Colombian coal to Israel. We also broke democratic — diplomatic relationships with Israel. We don’t have diplomatic relationships. And we are calling other countries to not supply energy that is used, actually — fossil fuel energy that is used in genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: And where is your family from in Palestine?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: It is from a very small village called Abu Shukheidim, very close to Ramallah. And my grandfather migrated to Colombia like almost a hundred years ago, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts on what Petro has done, and also for the global call here for a total energy embargo against Israel?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes. There is Genocide Convention. Actually, we know what is the impact of genocide, what is the impact on human rights of warfare. We have lived it ourselves. So, Colombia takes very seriously our commitments on the Convention on Genocide. And that convention calls countries, states that are part of the convention to not enable the means towards genocide. So, an energy embargo means that parties and countries become responsible for not allowing the means to Israel to commit that genocide. And we are — that’s why that’s the legal framework. There is also an International Court Justice resolution this year, sentence this year, that is calling what’s happening in Israel and Gaza a genocide. So, there is a legal framework for states to act. And that’s why the Colombian government is calling other states to not allow and provide the means for a genocide that is happening live — we can all see it — and that is actually tremendous on the most vulnerable people.

AMY GOODMAN: Minister Muhamad, you’re the head of the delegation here. President Petro didn’t come. Why not?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: President Petro canceled at last minute, because one week after COP16 in Colombia, we had very, very strong rainfall and flooding with one of our states, or departamentos, 85% flooded in the most vulnerable area in the country. So, he had to attend that situation. And it’s a paradox, because, basically, it is because of climate change that we are having these effects that affect the most vulnerable people.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, next year, the COP30 will be in Brazil. I’ve got two questions. One is, you were head of COP16, the biodiversity convention in Cali: How that’s different from this COP, what was being achieved? And then, here, the COP is coming for the first time right to the Amazon. And what that means as a sister country in Latin America?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Yes. We have worked with the Brazilian government. We call it the road from Cali to Belém, because actually it’s two years of these COPs in Latin America. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for a region to show a different path that puts humanity and nature at the center. Cali was an exemplary COP, because we call it a people’s COP. And it actually show how diversity, how the voices of those that are in the frontlines of the problem, can influence the environment of negotiation, can create empowerment and participation from the diversity of voices. And to solve these issues, climate, biodiversity, which is the loss of nature, which are actually interconnected, we need the knowledge of everybody, and we need the experience, the whole human experience. We cannot undervalue anybody.

And also, COP16 in Cali achieved something that so far has not been achieved here. We have created a new source of funding for biodiversity, which is the Cali Fund. And it’s a fund that we collect money from the private sector that is using genetic resources when they are in digital databases. They have to contribute now to this multilateral fund that then will be redistributed to the countries that have the biodiversity to protect it. So, actually, the Cali COP was very successful in creating this new funding source for global biodiversity to put — to make the private sector pay for the use of those resources and to convert private money into public money that can actually now protect the common good.

AMY GOODMAN: What exactly does biodiversity mean? And why does it matter?

SUSANA MUHAMAD: Actually, biodiversity is the diversity of life, and it is all the species that, interlinked into what we call the web of life, make our planet a living planet, create the ecosystem that provides all the sources of life for everybody to live, including humans. We forget that we are part of the biosphere. We are just not aliens that arrive here and are separated. And that’s why, when — every species that is extincted breaks that chain of life and creates an impact. And some scientists said, because that of human intervention, we are now entering the sixth global extinction of a species. It has happened five times before in the history of the planet, and we could be entering the sixth, but this time because of the influence of one species, with the human beings. So, biodiversity COP is about the convention on how to protect the diversity of life on Earth and how to protect nature.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who chairs Colombia’s climate delegation here at COP29 in Baku.

Coming up, we question Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister, the COP29 lead negotiator, about Azerbaijan’s crackdown on civil society. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Machines” by Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Choir. Next month, they’ll be debuting Extinction! The Musical at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

AMY GOODMAN: Overnight here at COP29, the U.S. and U.K. signed new agreements for civil nuclear collaboration and said Australia was expected to sign, but Australia’s acting prime minister confirmed today the country will not sign.

ACTING PRIME MINISTER RICHARD MARLES: I can confirm that the Australian government will not be signing that agreement. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would represent pursuing the single most expensive electricity option on the planet. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which would see $1,200 added to the household energy bills of each household in this country. For Australia, pursuing nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which wouldn’t see any new electricity into our grid in 20 years. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which would only see, at best, 4% contributed to the electricity grid two decades from now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined here in Baku at the COP29 climate summit by Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, part of the Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition, and Leona Morgan, a Diné community Navajo organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet and Haul No!

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! As you listen to this conversation, Tim, overall, we can hear everywhere here, I mean, the environmental movement is divided on nuclear power. And with this push on AI, on cryptocurrencies, I mean, you need nuclear power plants to fund a — one data center. It’s absolutely astounding. The reopening of Three Mile Island. Your thoughts?

TIM JUDSON: Yeah, well, I think the first thing you’ve got to understand about this recent wave of announcements about deals between nuclear power companies and data center companies and tech companies is that none of this involves buying power today. These are all deals to buy — to potentially buy nuclear power years down the road, you know, when some of these plants might exist.

But the reality is that the tech industry is building data centers and operating data centers today, which are consuming huge amounts of power. And that’s largely being powered, you know, by just what’s on the grid, which is largely fossil fuel energy. In fact, in some of the — a lot of the states in the country where this is happening, you’re seeing things happen like they’re extending the operation of coal plants or restarting coal plants or increasing the generation from gas plants and coal plants in order to power these data centers that are operating now.

So, you know, I think what we’re seeing is that the tech industry, especially under the Biden administration, is under some pressure to show that they’re actually being pro-climate, but they don’t want to wait to build data centers until they can build nuclear power plants. They’re doing that now. And so, it really seems more like what’s going on here is sort of an elaborate greenwashing scheme.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you can’t help but notice that you have, you know, President-elect Trump’s partner-in-chief here, Elon Musk, in charge, with Vivek Ramaswamy, of DOGE. That’s the Department of Government Efficiency. Clearly, the way that we’re going to be cutting billions out of the U.S. government budget is to deregulate, this at a time when they’re pushing to build nuclear power plants. Talk about the deregulation of nuclear power.

TIM JUDSON: Sure. Well, there’s actually been a tremendous amount of pressure over the last several years, orchestrated by the nuclear industry through Congress, to pass various bills and pieces of legislation that are already rolling back nuclear safety regulation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And so, the NRC over the last couple of years has actually been rewriting its regulations on how they license and permit the construction of nuclear power plants to make it, you know, streamlined, more efficient, what they say, more predictable. But this is really just keeping the public out of the process and creating a set of regulations that there’s no transparency to whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, I saw you the other day here in the hallways of the U.N. climate summit. You both were a part of an anti-nuclear action. I’ve also interviewed you about what’s going on in the Southwest United States. You’re Diné, Navajo. Talk about the experience of the uranium cycle, uranium needed to fuel these nuclear power plants, and what happens on reservations in areas where Indigenous people live here.

LEONA MORGAN: Sure. Thank you.

So, the first thing I want to say is that nuclear is not carbon-free. Nuclear is not carbon-neutral. Nuclear, it requires fossil fuels in order to extract the uranium, mill it, process it. All of the steps before the nuclear power plant require some type of energy. And so, it is not fueled by renewables or nuclear. It’s fueled by fossil fuels. And they just simply don’t count the carbon footprint before the nuclear power plant or after the nuclear power plant.

So, in the Southwest, we’re dealing with thousands of abandoned uranium mines. We’re dealing with a conventional uranium mill that’s taking waste from as far away as Japan and Estonia, because there are not enough properly licensed waste facilities. And the same with the high-level radioactive waste after the power plant. There are two proposals in the United States to store it in New Mexico and Texas. And we fought that, and we won. However, the industry is taking that to the Supreme Court. So we don’t know what will happen. Maybe in June we’ll find out. Hopefully, our victory stands.

But again, the nuclear industry is inherently racist. All of these activities, they depend on uranium, which comes mostly from Indigenous lands, not just in the United States, but even as we’re talking, you can think about other countries, Australia. Our Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition includes several folks from all over the world. And I also want to highlight what’s going on in Africa. There’s only one nuclear power plant in Africa. And Koeberg is also slated to be restarted because of this push for a so-called carbon-free energy future. And so, I just want to make it clear that it’s not carbon-free, and it depends on the resources from our communities, resulting in various health — lots of health effects. So, we haven’t even begun to study all of the health effects, especially the genetic future. We know that it causes, besides cancers, autoimmune disease, kidney disease, things like that, also reproductive issues. And so, we really need to do more studies on the impacts from drinking contaminated water, breathing contaminated air and eating contaminated food.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, talk more about what’s happened in Native America.

LEONA MORGAN: Well, going back to the beginning of colonization, I mean, I like to start with the Doctrine of Discovery. But from the 1872 mining law, which was created essentially to steal our land, we’re still dealing with thousands of abandoned uranium mines, and there is absolutely no funding to clean these sites up. The United States, our taxpayer dollars are going to fuel not just this so-called nuclear renaissance or this nuclear revival, but also nuclear weapons. And so, a lot of these so-called small modular reactors, they say they’re going to power our communities, but a lot of it is going to be used for nuclear weapons.

And so, with that, we’re dealing with — on Navajo Nation, where I come from, and most of the United States, we’re downwind from over 900 nuclear tests from the Nevada site. So, we’re hit doubly with the nuclear weapons impact and then the nuclear power impact, because both of them require uranium. And so, anybody living near abandoned uranium mines or anywhere there was uranium in the past are going to be threatened with new threats of new mining, new milling, new processing and all the things that come with it, including the cancers, the contamination and an unknown reproductive future.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the uranium mines and what has happened to them.

LEONA MORGAN: So, the uranium mines, especially in the Southwest, I’m going to focus on Navajo Nation. This is only — this is one place in the U.S. where they’re kind of doing cleanup. Again, there’s no funding for cleanup. We just lost what is called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. And so, the United States used to — since the ’90s until just earlier this year, the United States provided some funding for compensation for people who worked in mines, only people who worked after 1971, and the eligibility is quite sparse. And so, even RECA, people like Navajo miners claim that it is also racist that they have not received the same amount of compensation as, let’s say, non-Native or white miners.

So, what’s happening in the country is there’s no funding to clean up the abandoned uranium mines. And on Navajo, where there is some funding — not because the government is giving the funding, because the government is looking for responsible parties to sue, and if they’re lucky enough to get some money out of those companies, then they can do what they consider cleanup — cleanup is never done to community standards. So, there are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo alone, some say up to 2,000. And if they’re marked off or have a fence, that’s great, because then people will know this is a contaminated place and not to build their houses there, not to plant food, not to play or work or pray in those areas. So, a lot of these places are left unmarked, with radioactive dust blowing around and getting into the water and our food sources.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. I also want to ask Alex de Vries more, because people may be very surprised by this whole push for small nuclear power plants to fund these AI mining, these AI data centers around the world. Leona Morgan is with us, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet, and Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Center, also with Don’t Nuke the Planet. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “A Good Time Pushed,” a new song by Kim Deal. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit here in Baku, Azerbaijan. We are still joined by our three guests: Leona Morgan, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet, also Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and joining us from Amsterdam is Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist. I want to get to Alex in one minute, but I want to talk about alternatives and where you see, especially at this climate summit — Tim, let’s begin with you — the whole issue of renewables. And we know how the government has funded the nuclear power industry for years, that it was dying, for example, in the United States because they couldn’t afford the insurance alone and the threat of a meltdown, as we’ve seen from Chernobyl to Three Mile Island. But now there’s a resurgence. Could you imagine if that money went into renewables?

TIM JUDSON: It would be huge if it went into renewables. I mean, but the thing is that it’s actually not necessary for all that money to go in — all that public money to go into renewables, because renewables are already affordable as it is, you know, just to built, if people were given the access to them. But the nuclear industry is, pound for pound, the most subsidized energy industry in history. And the fact that they’re pumping more and more money into it, as this industry is basically on the verge of decline, is really one of the most false solutions that we’re talking about in the context of the climate talks. You know, if nuclear had to stand on its own two feet, it would phase out within a decade. But what we’re seeing is this push to promote nuclear really as a hedge against the decline of fossil fuels and a way to continue drilling and burning gas and oil, going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, very quickly, on this issue of renewables, also your fight right now around the Grand Canyon? You’re also with the group Haul No! That H-A-U-L.

LEONA MORGAN: Yes. Thanks, Amy. We’re fighting this uranium mine owned by Energy Fuels, which also owns the only uranium enrichment — I mean, I’m sorry, uranium mill in the country. And so, the mine would extract on Havasupai lands, and the mill is on Ute Mountain Ute lands. And the transport goes through Diné Bikéyah, so our lands. And this is being pushed, you know, all over the place, new uranium mining permits, new everything. And it’s really not going to solve the energy crisis. There is absolutely no transition that’s going to be able to power what humans — what we’re consuming today.

On Indigenous lands, we’re dealing with all kinds of different projects, such as hydrogen hubs and lithium mines. On our relatives’ lands in Nevada, they’re trying to protect a sacred site called Peehee Mu’huh. And then, the Hualapai in Arizona, they’re actually being mined by our tribe, the Navajo Nation. And so, as we’re fighting to protect our land and uphold our sovereignty, because the Navajo Nation has a law against transport, Haul No! and others, we’re also working to hold our own Navajo Nation accountable to not mine on our neighbors’ sacred places.

And so, it’s not just uranium. It’s all of these transitional minerals that are going to affect some community somewhere. And we don’t want that. We need to reduce our consumption in order to have not just a peaceful environment, but a safe and — how do you say? We are really concerned about our well-being. And in Diné, we say ”Hózhó.” We want a place where we can practice our culture and live in Hózhó.

AMY GOODMAN: In these last few minutes, we’re coming back to Alex de Vries in Amsterdam, founder of Digiconomist, a research company dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. And I’m also looking at a piece by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker magazine, “The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I.: How can the world reach net zero if it keeps on inventing new ways to consume energy?” And the piece begins with you, Alex. Is it true, something like what it would take to fund GPChat [sic] is — the fuel it would take would fuel the country of Ireland, Alex? ChatGPT, sorry.

ALEX DE VRIES: Yeah, indeed, it could be the case. Specifically, I try to visualize what would happen if we would just turn Google into a ChatGPT, whereas a single ChatGPT interaction consumes actually just a very small amount of power, just three watt hours, which is, you know, something like an illumined LED light bulb running for one hour. But, then again, at the scale of Google, you’re talking about 9 billion of the interactions every single day. And then you will, indeed, have the power need of a country like Ireland just to power that. And I actually quantify that all AI-related energy consumption could quite rapidly go up to the level of a country like Argentina by the year 2027, just to power artificial intelligence alone. That doesn’t include all other data centers that we use for, basically, cryptocurrency mining and everything else. So, yeah, we see these energy demands are rapidly rising. And in a world where we have limited renewable energy supply available, that just means that we are going to be using more of our backup energy source, which is fossil fuels.

AMY GOODMAN: Alex de Vries, we want to thank you so much for being with us, founder of Digiconomist, speaking to us from Amsterdam; Leona Morgan, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Climate, as well as Haul No!; and Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, also part of Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition.

Yes, we are broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. We want to wish a very happy birthday to Iván Hincapié! Democracy Now! produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff. I’m Amy Goodman, from Baku, Azerbaijan.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting here at the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

We turn now to look at the controversial push here at the U.N. climate summit to expand nuclear power production across the globe. Supporters of nuclear energy view it as a carbon-free energy source that’s needed to combat the climate crisis. But critics warn nuclear power is too expensive and risky.

Last year at the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, more than two dozen countries, including the United States, pledged to triple nuclear energy capacity. In a statement, the countries said expanding nuclear energy is needed for, quote, “achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions / carbon neutrality by or around mid-century and in keeping a 1.5°C limit on temperature rise.” Six more countries joined the pledge last week. The Biden administration recently unveiled a plan to create an additional 200 gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity by midcentury.

The incoming Trump administration is expected to continue the push to expand nuclear energy. Trump’s pick for energy secretary, the fracking magnate, CEO Chris Wright, sits on the board of the nuclear power startup Oklo.

Meanwhile, private tech companies are also investing in nuclear energy. Google has announced plans to build seven small nuclear reactors in the U.S. to help power the company’s data centers and artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft has said it would fund the reopening of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. And Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary has signed a deal with Dominion Energy to develop small nuclear reactors.

We’re joined right now by three guests. Alex de Vries, we’re going to go to first. He’s joining us from Amsterdam, a Ph.D. candidate who studies the sustainability of emerging technologies at the VU Amsterdam University. He’s the founder of Digiconomist, a research company dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies.

Alex, we’re going to begin with you. Can you explain why there is such an enormous need for energy when it comes to artificial intelligence, AI data centers?

ALEX DE VRIES: Yeah, of course. Well, the thing with generative AI and, well, huge applications like ChatGPT is that they’re really using massive models in the background. And one typical dynamic is that the bigger you make those models, the better they perform, which is what everyone wants. But the downside of that is that bigger models also means more computational resources are required, and thus energy in the end. Where we had multimillion-parameter models just a few years ago, now you’re talking about models with billions or even trillions of parameters, and they just keep on growing, because everyone wants to offer the best user experience. But that costs a lot of resources.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about — I mean, I don’t know even how much people understand. I mean, in 2016, you found one bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as the average American household does in a day. Why does AI, why do cryptocurrencies — we talked about Amazon, we talked about Google, I mean, also Elon Musk with cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin. Why do they require so much electricity?

ALEX DE VRIES: Yeah, they actually both contain economic incentives to keep spending more on energy. In the case of cryptocurrency mining, there is a reward available for those who would participate in the mining process. And ultimately, everyone is incentivized to just, you know, keep putting in more computational power, as long as it’s profitable to do so. So, the more money is available as a reward, which has been growing over the past few years. As the bitcoin price kept going up in value, the more people put in energy-hungry equipment to participate in that process. And with AI, it has very similar incentives in the sense that everyone wants to have the biggest, best and most energy-hungry model, simply because the biggest models offer the best user experience. And that, in turn, will give you the biggest market share, and thus the highest revenues. So, both of these technologies contain different but still economic incentives to keep using more resources to make these applications run.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why is bitcoin responsible for more than 95% of the carbon footprint of all cryptocurrencies?

ALEX DE VRIES: Yeah, that’s because bitcoin uses the very specific mining process where, in order to create a new block for the underlying blockchain, a new block of transactions, everyone in the bitcoin network has to participate in what I like to describe as a massive game of guess the number, whereas the whole network is making an insane amount of calculations every second of the day, 600 quintillion attempts — it’s like 600 with 18 zeros — every second of the day, nonstop. One participant guesses correctly every 10 minutes and then gets to create the next block for the blockchain, and they get a reward for that. These miners are earning up to or more than $10 billion a year from this process. But, of course, they are also spending a huge amount of money on the energy to participate in this process, and nowadays actually more than entire countries, like Sweden and Argentina, just for mining bitcoin. But other cryptocurrencies, they use other types of algorithms, so those algorithms are not dependent on computational effort. This is why bitcoin is kind of the only big cryptocurrency left standing today which still uses the extremely energy-intensive mining.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to ask you about the organizations and the people who are pushing for nuclear energy to fulfill the demands of AI and cryptocurrency. If you can talk about some of these companies? We know Elon Musk, for example, is pro-nuclear.

ALEX DE VRIES: Yes, of course. Well, there’s actually two avenues here. First of all, what we see is that a lot of these tech companies are looking at existing nuclear energy sources as a way to power their AI operations today. One obvious advantage of nuclear power is that it’s zero-carbon energy. But what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to get this power from nuclear reactors that have previously been shut down. They’re trying to revive these nuclear reactors. And this actually carries a very interesting safety dimension, because if you look at what goes on, is that how these nuclear reactors — they get shut down at a certain point in time. They start to decay, because the moment they shut down, they no longer have to meet safety regulations. And now these big tech companies show up and try to revive these facilities, which are already outdated and haven’t been safe for quite some time, just to power their current AI operations, because they want to have zero-carbon energy. It carries a lot of safety risks.

And then, the other avenue is, going forward, we also see a lot of talk about expanding the nuclear — existing nuclear power supply to fuel future AI energy demand. But then, the thing is, there’s actually quite a bit of a mismatch between the needs of the tech companies today and, well, the ability to deliver that power to them, because if you are building out new nuclear infrastructure, those are long-term projects that can take up to a decade to complete, while we’re in the middle of an AI hype today. And no one is guaranteeing that there will still be this much demand for AI 10 years from now, when your nuclear reactor is finished.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking to you in Amsterdam. The Netherlands had decided to phase out nuclear power but then reversed its decision. There are two new nuclear plants being built there, where you are?

ALEX DE VRIES: Well, yeah, you can see that nuclear power is indeed experiencing a bit of a revival. I guess everyone is realizing that this type of power is zero carbon, and that’s what we need if we’re going to go green. Obviously, it’s not as safe as wind or solar power, but, then again, nuclear reactors nowadays, with the latest technological standards, are still very safe. But it’s just that constructing them is relatively expensive compared to expanding the wind and solar power supplies. So, whether this is the best investment still remains a question.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. We begin today’s show with more on the ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders here in Azerbaijan. Gubad Ibadoghlu is a political economist and anti-corruption activist who’s called for greater transparency in oil and gas sector revenues. He was violently detained in July of 2023 on charges Human Rights Watch describes as “bogus.” If convicted, he faces over 17 years in prison. He spoke to the BBC last week from house arrest.

GUBAD IBADOGHLU: Azerbaijan economy heavy relies of the oil and the gas sector. My academic and the policy research focuses on the oil and the gas revenue and how the oil and the gas revenue manage in Azerbaijan. And I promote the transparency, anti-corruption and accountability not in the Azerbaijan level, in the national level. As you know, I am academic. I need to go to the university, but instead the university, I am going every week twice to register, to report the police department. I am a law-abiding citizen of Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, we are living the lawless country. There is not any role of the court, and this is not legal process. It depend on the political decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Before his arrest, Gubad Ibadoghlu was a senior visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Rutgers University. He had previously led an anti-corruption nonprofit here in Baku called the Economic Research Center, which the government shut down in 2014. Since then, Ibadoghlu had been living in exile, until he returned last year to visit his family, when he was detained. He spent the next nine months in pretrial detention and was moved to house arrest earlier this year because of his deteriorating health.

To talk more about Gubad Ibadoghlu, we’re joined right now by his daughter, Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer who focuses on LGBTQ rights. They’ve been advocating for his release, as well as the release of other political prisoners here in Azerbaijan. And they won the 2024 Magnitsky Prize in the category of Outstanding Young Human Rights Activist.” They join us now from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Zhala, welcome to Democracy Now!, I’m sorry under these conditions. Can you talk about why your father was imprisoned and now under house arrest?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: Thank you a lot for having me here.

And the main reason my dad, Dr. Gubad, was in prison is that — because of his research on corruption and the oil and gas industry and how it affects environment and transparency, and the oil and gas industry also quite, Azerbaijani one, well known for money laundering and the corruption around the world. What my dad was doing, he was investigating money laundering while he was teaching at LSE. And what his investigations were showing, as well, is that Azerbaijan was not only money laundering, but also using the money to corrupt Western politicians, diplomats, but at the same time not doing it alone, but doing it together with Russia and the Turkish government.

What my dad was trying to do is to investigate them, but also he opened a foundation in U.K., and that foundation is supposed to serve as a scholarship for Azerbaijani students. And my dad wanted to get that laundered money to that foundation so that the Azerbaijani students can actually come and study in Western countries, learn more about human rights and democracy, and then try to — young people try to change the country in a better and a meaningful way. And that’s what basically was the main reason that the Azerbaijani government decided to detain him, in a very horrible fashion as they basically physically assaulted both my parents.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the day that your dad was arrested?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: On the day when my dad was arrested, I was actually working on my diploma thesis for master’s degree. And we actually talked, and he told me that he’s going to come and read that and let me know what he thinks about it. And then he went, together with my mom, to do shopping. My dad came to see my grandma, who is a disabled person, so they were shopping for her. And on the way while driving, the six police cars — actually, they were civil cars, so they didn’t have any, like, police emblem on them — physically crashed — like, they crashed their car, and then 20 men in black came and physically assaulted my parents.

My mom was extremely terrified. She actually thought that this is some kind of, like, trafficking or mafia, like organ mafia or sex mafia, so she was actually screaming, saying that, like, “I’m too old for that,” like, “My husband’s organs are not working,” because they didn’t have any police symbol, and they didn’t even introduce themselves. So they basically attacked on my family, my parents. As a result, my mom lost 30% of her nerve function on her right side of brain, so she has been having difficulty just to balance herself. And my dad was kept nine months under the isolation center without — no access to drinkable water, proper food or medication, and then transferred to the house arrest.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk more about what happened to your mother.

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: So, while my mom was detained, she was actually kept there to pressure my dad. And the reason that they were trying to do is they were threatening my dad that they’re going to rape her and they’re going to physically assault her. So they were kept in different cars, but then, later on, in different rooms in organized crime department since their detention, so they couldn’t even meet.

My mom has to stay in Azerbaijan for two months, and she was being followed all the time. We couldn’t get her out because she had a travel ban. But me and my brothers, we have been doing this advocacy around the world to rescue our parents. And as a result of European Parliament resolution on September 2023, we managed to move my mom to Sweden, together with me. So she’s staying with me right now. And we had to hospitalize her a couple of times, in Lund Hospital. However, it took us two months to get her out. And she was in a sense of a priority to rescue, because she was — we were extremely worried about her, as she has never done anything political.

And the reason that they did this, the way that they physically assaulted my parents and brutally attacked them, is because they wanted to show everybody and to create also a chilling effect. They wanted to show that, see, if the Aliyev regime can detain LSE professor and actually can physically assault his wife, then he can do it to anybody, because never in our history anybody’s wife has been detained or has been physically assaulted in this way, so it’s the first time for us, but our society, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re, I guess you could say, in a kind of silo here at the U.N. climate summit, Zhala. And there’s very little awareness here of what’s going on outside. If you can talk about what has happened over the last year in the lead-up to this COP summit? And your father, an anti-corruption economist, is not unrelated to this summit, because he particularly is calling for transparency around oil and gas transactions. And if you can talk about what those oil and gas transactions mean for the president, Aliyev, and the people in his government?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: Now we basically have more than 300 political prisoners. When my dad was detained, before his detention, we had 98 political prisoners. And after him, in less than six months, they detained more than 200 people. So, what we call it is a start of an unprecedented crackdown. And what we understand, that it is quite related to COP29. In previous events that Azerbaijan hosted, like Eurovision or some kind of like European Games, we had a lot of activism has been done by civil society, people who deal with their activism, people who try to inform everybody what’s going on in Azerbaijan. So, basically, in a sense, the regime, learning from this, decided to clean up all the streets from activists from Azerbaijan or from all the civil society. Even there was two separate persons who protested in Blue and Green Zone. They were also physically assaulted and was kicked out from both places. And they were both Azerbaijanis who has been protesting for animal rights, but also the labor rights of the people who has been working for the COP29 venue and they have not been paid enough.

As for the oil and gas, what my dad’s research shows —

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala —

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: — is that — what my dad’s research shows is that the 1.3% of the whole energy balance of Azerbaijan comes from renewable energy. So, 70% and 28, respectively, comes from oil and gas energy. So Azerbaijan is not even actually investing on renewable energy. At the same time, the more than 50% of the Azerbaijani budget revenues actually comes from oil and gas sale. It’s very important, because after the invasion of Ukraine, right now Europe is trying to rely on Azerbaijan and buying oil and gas from Azerbaijan. But also my dad’s research shows that the oil and gas that Azerbaijan pumps to Europe is not really coming from Azerbaijan, because the Azerbaijani oil and gas, basically, extraction is getting more and more difficult, and we don’t really have enough to supply to Europe. What Azerbaijan right now is doing is also buying it from Russia. So, considering that our economy is completely relying on oil and gas sales and the COP29 is a great place to have a lot of oil and gas lobbyists, it’s actually a great chance for the Azerbaijani government to have more oil and gas contracts, whether this comes from Russia or not, and then to enrich the regime itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala Bayramova, you are a human rights lawyer. You have a good deal of experience understanding what’s going on here. If you could explain who the Azerbaijani president is, Ilham Aliyev? He’s been in power for 20 years, following his father, his regime routinely targeting climate activists, human rights activists and journalists, jailing them.

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: I can actually explain it from my own experience in Azerbaijan when I was living there. I was tortured twice in Baku, and also in Lankaran, like in a different city, as well. So, I’m a human rights lawyer, but I was also working as an activist. I have been observing the elections, writing the cases to European Court of Human Rights. And what happened is that as a result of all this tortures, I cannot sleep without a neck pillow, as they injured my neck discs. They also crushed my ribs and my kneecaps, so which means that I am unable to wear, like, a normal bra and all these things, because I still have injuries that I have in my body. And I’m also diagnosed as PTSD.

So, this is like one example for me, but that’s not it. Azerbaijani government is not only staying there and only, like, targeting us, physically detaining us in detention centers. No, they are also trying to target us psychologically. So, for example, they spread our personal photos. My personal photos have been spread on internet, and also photos from, like, my first Halloween in Sweden. So, they’re spreading this kind of photos as trying to, like, kind of picture us in a bad light, saying that, oh, we are pro-Western, we are very pro-European. So, we are, like — I don’t know — celebrating Halloween and all these things. I also have pictures, and also my dad’s, [inaudible], which they also spread on internet. Azerbaijani government also sex tape the activists. They put hidden cameras to their rooms, to their bathrooms. They even sometimes send spies to have a relationship with especially women activists and sex tape it and put it on internet. So, it sounds like a movie, but it’s in real life in Azerbaijan.

At the same time, while talking about the regime, I think it’s quite clear — when looking at the Azerbaijani regime, it’s quite clear to see that before Ilham Aliyev, it was his father who was also president of Azerbaijan during Soviet Union and a KGB general. And Ilham Aliyev, as it seems, getting his son to get ready to succeed himself. And his wife is the vice president of Azerbaijan. So, it’s more like a monarchy. It’s a family affair, in a sense, and they own everything. Like, they own the insurance companies. They own all the banks, properties and everything. It’s not a state-owned, it’s a family oligarch-owned in Azerbaijan.

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala Bayramova, we want to thank you for being with us, Azerbaijani human rights lawyer, LGBTQ activist, and daughter of the political prisoner Gubad Ibadoghlu, a prominent anti-corruption economist and well-known professor, imprisoned and now under house arrest. Zhala has been advocating for his release, as well as the release of other political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Coming up next, we look at the growing debate over nuclear power as Google, Amazon, Microsoft invest in nuclear plants to power their artificial intelligence projects. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we continue our coverage from COP29 here in Baku, Azerbaijan. I’m Amy Goodman.

We look at what Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president means for the climate. Clean energy and environmental advocates are raising alarm over Trump’s nomination of oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright to serve as energy secretary. Wright is a fracking magnate who has long championed fossil fuel production and publicly denied the existence of the climate crisis. He is the CEO of the Denver-based oil field firm Liberty Energy, serves on the board of Oklo, a nuclear power startup. Wright posted this video on his LinkedIn profile just last year.

CHRIS WRIGHT: There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either. Humans and all complex life on Earth is simply impossible without carbon dioxide, hence the term “carbon pollution” is outrageous. … There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy. … These five terms — “climate crisis,” “energy transition,” “carbon pollution,” “clean energy” and “dirty energy” — are not only deceptive, they are in fact destructive deceptions.

AMY GOODMAN: Wright is also known for drinking a fracking fluid bleach cocktail on camera to prove it was safe. In a statement, Trump said Wright would be ushering in a so-called “Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,” unquote.

Trump has also announced North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as his pick to lead the Interior Department, a position currently held by Deb Haaland, who made history as the first Native American to ever serve as a cabinet secretary. Trump wrote in a statement, quote, “We will DRILL BABY DRILL, expand ALL forms of Energy production to grow our Economy, and create good-paying jobs,” unquote. Burgum was also tapped to head a newly created National Energy Council, which will seek to, quote, “enforce U.S. energy dominance,” unquote, globally.

For more, we’re joined here in Baku by Manish Bapna, president of the NRDC — that’s the Natural Resources Defense Council — and Natural Resources Defense Council Action.

So, we just have a few minutes at the end of this show. First respond to Chris Wright’s nomination, the climate denier, the fracking magnate, the man who drank bleach and fracking fluid on TV.

MANISH BAPNA: It is deeply troubling. It is startling but shouldn’t be a surprise in light of the fact of who nominated him. It’s particularly jarring as we sit here in Baku at the climate COP. We’re already flirting with 1.5 degrees. We have — already kind of behind the game in reducing emissions.

And now we have not only Chris Wright, but we have Doug Burgum as the head of interior, potentially, and Lee Zeldin as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. These are serious positions. They’re senior Cabinet positions in the next administration for the United States, you know, charged with protecting clean air, clean water, creating jobs for the future. And all of these nominations are just deeply troubling. They represent a significant regression at a time when we need to see much, much greater progress.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what are you doing about it? We said “nominate.” We didn’t say they are appointed —

MANISH BAPNA: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: — although that’s what President-elect Trump would like to see, is recess appointments. So, how are you organizing?

MANISH BAPNA: We are trying to shine a light on who they are and what they represent and how out of touch they are with what the public actually wants. When we see polling around the importance of clean air, clean water, protecting public health, creating jobs, lowering energy costs — the thing is that clean energy has been demonstrated to be more affordable, more reliable. It’s more energy secure than a lot of the other options that people are promoting. We even see, with the unprecedented progress that’s happened in the last few years with the Inflation Reduction Act, an incredible set of investments taking place all around the country. The Inflation Reduction Act has generated 85% of investments in red districts, in Republican districts. Sixty-eight percent of the jobs created are in Republican districts. We are demonstrating that clean energy is good for the entire country. And they’re going to take us backwards. And so, we’re going to do what we can to shine a light on their record and try to see if we could find the right people to lead these agencies. But if that is not possible, we will do what we can to hold them accountable.

AMY GOODMAN: So, having Energy Secretary Chris Wright, not only does President Trump — President-elect Trump, at this point, want recess appointments, he doesn’t want them backgrounded by the FBI. When you don’t have a hearing, you don’t learn about people’s financial investments, conflicts of interest. Trump himself has refused to sign ethics forms since October. What would that mean, a man who would stand to gain an enormous amount as head of energy company Liberty Energy?

MANISH BAPNA: All you have to do is follow the money, right? All three of these candidates — you look at someone like Chris Wright, who we heard what he said, and we know where he would actually benefit. He is the CEO of a fracking company. We have Doug Burgum, who played an important role in brokering a deal between President-elect Trump and oil and gas billionaires in Florida a couple months ago, when President-elect Trump said that for a billion dollars, he will provide favors to the oil and gas industry. You have to follow the money. And that is one of the biggest challenges we see in politics in the United States today, which has been exacerbated since Citizens United back in 2010. More money into politics, more corporate money into politics, has just created the challenges we’re seeing today.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about North Dakota Governor Burgum. Of course, North Dakota, the site of an epic battle in the last years around the Dakota Access Pipeline with the Energy Transfer Partners. But what it means to have him as head of the interior? And not only head of the interior, Donald Trump has said he will also serve as energy czar.

MANISH BAPNA: This is a huge job, right? The Department of the Interior is responsible for our public lands, about conservation, about how we use those public lands wisely for today and for tomorrow. And so, he’ll be in a position to expand oil and gas leasing in offshore water, on land, at a time when just last year’s COP, as you mentioned earlier, the international community recognized we needed to transition away from fossil fuels.

The United States is already the largest oil and gas producer in the world, increasing rapidly. And now we have someone who has promised to further accelerate oil and gas exploration in the United States, perhaps most notably will be lifting the pause on LNG exports that the Biden administration put in place just six months ago. And with someone like him responsible for energy across the entire administration, it creates real serious concerns about how we make sure that the United States stays focused on the clean energy transition. The one thing I would say, though —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

MANISH BAPNA: — is that the clean energy transition in the United States is unstoppable. It’s going to hit some speed bumps now, but it will move forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Natural Resources Defense Council Action.

That does it for our show. Our deepest condolences to Karen Ranucci on the passing of her father. And a happy 80th birthday to Danny DeVito. I’m Amy Goodman, here in Baku, Azerbaijan.

AMY GOODMAN: As climate talks are underway here in Baku, human rights groups have warned of Azerbaijan’s escalating crackdown on civil society groups, government critics and the press. Since Azerbaijan was announced as the host of COP29 last year, more than a dozen activists and journalists have been arrested or arbitrarily detained, including prominent human rights and climate advocate Anar Mammadli, who is leader of Azerbaijan’s largest independent election watchdog, and Azerbaijani anti-corruption advocate Gubad Ibadoghlu, who is also a vocal critic of the oil and gas industry.

For more, we’re going nearby to Tbilisi, Georgia, where we’re joined by Giorgi Gogia, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, co-author of the recent report titled “’We Try to Stay Invisible’: Azerbaijan’s Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society.”

Giorgi, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can start off by talking about the main findings of your report?

GIORGI GOGIA: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Amy.

I just want to start with a very sad observation. I was listening to your program and watching how you interviewed, like, you know, activists globally talking about the climate crisis. And I could not help but think about the deafening silence of Azerbaijani climate activists, human rights defenders, and think about what this COP would have been like if people on whose cases — whose cases were documented in the report and on whose behalf I will be talking to you about, how different it would have been if they were there to voice their criticism, for their voices to be heard by the globe.

Let me talk a little bit about the kind of findings. And Azerbaijan has had an abysmal rights record for many years, but it has dramatically deteriorated in the run-up to COP29. Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now have documented 33 cases of arrests, [inaudible] arrests and imprisonment of journalists, activists, human rights defenders and just government critics on various bogus charges. We have also found that government has used very repressive laws to allow the — to refuse the registration of independent groups and to push them to the margins of the law, allowing retaliatory prosecutions, which we have documented in this report.

AMY GOODMAN: So, give us the example of people who have been arrested.

GIORGI GOGIA: You have mentioned the name of Anar Mammadli, and he’s the head of one of the top human rights groups. He’s a veteran human rights defender, election-monitoring watchdog, who has been arrested in April this year, shortly, weeks after he announced the establishment of, creation of a climate justice initiative intending to highlight the human rights problems of Azerbaijan in the run-up to COP29, and shortly after he published his independent observation report about the presidential elections from February this year.

This is not the first time Anar was arrested. He was arrested and served to two-and-a-half years in 2013, ’14, when, again, Azerbaijan was in the height of the crackdown against independent voices in the country. And the European Court of Human Rights has found not only there are violations of European Court in his arrest, but also that this violation, Azerbaijan pursued the ulterior motives in arresting him, intending to silence him.

Unfortunately, once again, the Azerbaijani government is attempting to silence him, after he was refused to — his registration of his one NGO was abolished, and he was refused to register the second group that was working to monitor the elections in the country. He’s serving — he’s facing multiple years, up to eight or 12 years, in prison on bogus charges of money smuggling.

Another activist, a professor, a renowned scholar, anti-corruption activist, who worked in the oil and gas field and criticized the lack of transparency of revenue in the oil and gas field in Azerbaijan, is Gubad Ibadoghlu, a renowned scholar, who was arrested last year and served nine months in pretrial detention and is currently under limited house arrest but still facing up to 17 years in jail if convicted on counterfeit and extremism charges. These are the voices you should be hearing during COP29 Baku, but you are not.

I would also highlight the cases of independent journalists from several independent media, online media outlets, Abzas Media, Toplum TV. Human Rights Watch has documented 12 cases of journalists and six other media — affiliated people with this media being arrested also in the last few months and facing money smuggling charges, tax evasion and other bogus charges. These are, you know, Ulvi Hasanli, Sevinc Vagifgizi, Hafiz Babali and others. And these are the people whose voices are again being silenced. These are the people who should be holding Azerbaijan, the powers, accountable to the people.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about if these issues are being raised here at the COP? I mean, you have top leaders of, for example, the West, European countries, Western countries. Are they pressuring Azerbaijan to release the journalists, the climate, the human rights activists who have been arrested in these last months in the lead-up to this very summit?

GIORGI GOGIA: Well, I certainly hope so, because this has been a call from local and international human rights groups, including some governments, that they should be engaging Baku, they should be engaging Azerbaijani authorities to ensure that everyone that is on politically motivated charges in prison in Azerbaijan are released and there’s an end to the crackdown, that’s only intention is to silence the critical voices in the country. They should also be calling on Azerbaijani government to end the — to amend the laws, the repressive laws, that allow arbitrary implementation of those laws and allow the denial of the independent groups to register and be able to conduct independent, legitimate human rights work in the country.

You know, you discussed how this is a great climate crisis, and this kind of climate crisis requires robust human rights actions by all governments. But also the response to this climate crisis requires the participation by all groups, independent groups, in them. Unfortunately, the groups that we are not hearing during this COP are Azerbaijani independent civil society that are languishing in jail or are under house arrest or are in exile because they’re not able to be present in Baku, to be present and doing negotiations, to be actively kind of promoting robust climate action. And this is not just kind of arrests, but, you know, there has been — just last year, there has been other examples when climate activists — not even climate activists, like local residents of a small village, for example, in western Azerbaijan, in Soyudlu, have tried to organize, criticize the government for construction of the gold mine and the dam, and the government response has been such a heavy-handed by not only arresting and prosecuting the local population, but also cordoning, blocking the entire village for months, not allowing any journalists, confiscating their equipment and not allowing any information to get in or get out.

So, this is the country that really puts independent voices on the path of extinction. And it’s really important for Azerbaijan to end this crackdown, or for Azerbaijan’s international partners to ensure, to insist, to urge Baku to release those unjustly imprisoned and end the crackdown in the country against critical voices.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, and we just have 30 seconds for a response to this, the significance of oil and gas accounting for something like 92% of Azerbaijan’s exports? Its main importer of that gas, 80% of it, goes — what? The biggest importer is the European Union. Do you think that would stop them from criticizing the president and Azerbaijan overall?

GIORGI GOGIA: Well, that certainly should not stop them from doing it. And the EU should be insisting that as part of the partnership, as part of the negotiation, as part of the cooperation between Azerbaijan and European Union, Azerbaijan should adhere to human rights, to principles of human rights. And I hope European Union is insisting on — in direct calls or behind the closed doors, is insisting on the release of independent journalists, activists, human rights defenders, and the end to this crackdown. This is the only proper, the right response that the EU should be engaging in.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Giorgi, finally, how common is it for you to do something like this today, speak with a journalist on television inside Azerbaijan? Of course, you’re outside.

GIORGI GOGIA: Well, the reason I’m outside is because I have been detained and kicked out of the country in 2015, actually, when I was there to monitor the trial of a human rights defender. I was not allowed to get in. Furthermore, Human Rights Watch deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division, that had the registration for the COP29, was rejected, the visa, just a few days ago, and he’s not able to be on the ground to highlight it. So, the reason I am speaking from afar is because Azerbaijan is preventing many of us who criticize Azerbaijan from entering the country. It is closing, for international scrutiny, its borders. Nevertheless, we continue to do the work and highlight the cases of those who are imprisoned on nothing more but doing their legitimate human rights work.

AMY GOODMAN: Giorgi Gogia, we want to thank you so much for being with us, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, co-author of the report, which we will link to, “’We Try to Stay Invisible’: Azerbaijan’s Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society,” speaking to us from Tbilisi, Georgia.

When we come back, President-elect Trump has promised to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement again. And while filling out his Cabinet, he’s chosen oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright as his nominee for energy secretary, a fracking magnate, a climate denier, a champion of fossil fuels. We’ll be back in 20 seconds.