Photo via United Nations by Kiara Worth
Don’t buy the rainbows of proclaimed success shooting out of their butts.
In the end, the negotiators and so-called “world leaders” at the 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) couldn’t even bring themselves to utter the phrase “phase out fossil fuels.”
The final agreement that came out of COP28, after two weeks of negotiation, calls instead for a global “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
Just. Orderly. Equitable.
Those aren’t the kinds of words that could ever be open to interpretation by bad actors. Right?
Maybe we should ask the island nations that have for years been begging COPs, largely unsuccessfully, for funds for mitigating the global-warming-driven devastation they’re already dealing with.
Meanwhile, the apologists, including many mainstream media outlets, have been spouting headlines with words and phrases like:
“Historic”
“First-of-Its-Kind”
“Monumental”
“Milestone”
“Major New Climate Agreement”
“’Beginning of the End’ of Fossil Fuels”
Rubbish.
To borrow a phrase from former vice president Spiro Agnew, one of the most infamous of corrupt actors in U.S. history, when it comes to the results of COP28, journalists and commentators seem to be “nattering nabobs of positivity.”
The statement that we need to transition away from fossil fuels would have been appropriate for the very first COP, perhaps. Twenty-eight years later adopting “phase out fossil fuels” should have been a no-brainer.
“On climate deals, beware the word ‘historic’: It’s a trap!” wrote Emily Atkin, founder of Heated. “It is important for leaders of high-polluting nations to put a positive spin on the outcomes of global climate talks. An easy way to achieve said spin in to market the outcome as ‘historic.’”
But they can’t turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse, no matter what they say.
Climate Cop-Out
As Atkin further points out, this is, in fact, historic, monumental, a first, etc., technically speaking. But that’s only because the final communique out of a COP has never contained the words “fossil fuels” before.
There are some good ideas and aspirations are embedded in the final text, but a close look behind the headlines shows that, for the most part, what really came out of COP28 was more same-same-same-same from the so-called leaders who have enabled fossil-fuels interests to trash our planet and intensify global warming for decades.
The final agreement is just another furthering of the tried-and-proven delay strategy that oil, gas and coal industries have been executing for, well, forever. And quite effectively, at that.
(To learn more about the extent of the strategy’s effectiveness, check out David Lipsky’s recent book, “The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.”)
Speaking of fossil-fuels industries, they were very well represented at COP28.
First off, the summit was held at Expo City, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is one of the world’s largest oil producers. The summit’s president was H.E. Sultan Al Jaber, a member of UAE’s federal cabinet and its minister of industry and advanced technology.
Secondly, as Arielle Samuelson from Heated reported, there were “…2,456 fossil fuel representatives at this year’s United Nations Climate Change conference in the United Arab Emirates, according to an analysis of summit attendees published… by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition.”
Why and how on earth these people are allowed into these summits, let alone able to impact them in one way or the other, is beyond my comprehension. The summits should be limited to government officials, climate scientists and bona fide journalists, and they shouldn’t be held in a fair-like atmosphere.
Granted, that would be tough when government officials, fossil-fuel industry representatives and lobbyists are the same people. But still. It’s worth whatever effort is necessary to limit their access.
But then who am I, besides one of the several billion human beings who will be severely impacted by further delays, distractions, inactions and bait-and-switches?
What Climate Activists & Scientists Are Saying
As she so often does, climate activist Greta Thunberg said it best.
“This text is toothless and it is nowhere even close to being sufficient to keep us within the 1.5-degree limit. It is a stab in the back for those most vulnerable.”
Island nations, which are, right now, threatened by rising seas and regularly bashed by storms made worse by global warming, see the result of the summit as a death knell.
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said the agreement contains “a litany of loopholes.” Further, it said, the deal “…does not deliver on a subsidy phaseout, and it does not advance us beyond the status quo…. It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do.”
Climate scientists agree. “’The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,’ said Prof Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. ‘To ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. It’s like promising your doctor that you will ‘transition away from doughnuts’ after being diagnosed with diabetes.’”
None of this is binding, anyway, and nations have seldom lived up to what their negotiators have agreed to at any of the first 27 COPs.
Despite that, legendary climate activist and author Bill McKibbon attempted to inject a little hope into the post-COP-out analysis.
He wrote that the transition-away language “…may not seem like much – it is, after all, the single most obvious thing one could possibly say about climate change, akin to ‘in an effort to reduce my headache, I am transitioning away from hitting myself in the forehead with a hammer.”
Still, he went on, it is “…a tool for activists to use henceforth. The world’s nations have now publicly agreed that they need to transition off fossil fuels, and that sentence will hang over every discussion from now on.”
And, finally: “What I’m trying to say is, today’s agreement is literally meaningless – and potentially meaningful.”
No offense to McKibbon, who is clearly making the best out of a weak-ass outcome, but that doesn’t inspire a whole lot of optimism.
Distract. Deny. Delay. Same. Same. Same…
The climate crisis is on the cusp of morphing into a global climate catastrophe, and the best the United Nations Conference of the Parties can come up with is a meaningless, but maybe meaningful, non-binding agreement.
We’d be better off if the negotiators, politicians, elected officials and fossil-fuels executives kept their private jets on the tarmacs in their own nations. That would arguably do more to slow the acceleration of global warming than holding even one more COP.
Fact is, we’re seeing no gold at the end of the many rainbow-like proclamations of success.
Instead, the deny and delay and distract beat goes on:
Same-same-same-same… Same-same-same-same… Same-same-same-same…
All talk and little action is getting us nowhere. Something - or someone - BOLD, to do the right thing would be welcome!