RANT: HERE A COP, THERE A COP, EVERYWHERE A COP-COP!

 

JUST SO NO ONE IS CONFUSED, there are two cops we're talking about. November 6-18, 2022 saw the twenty-seventh climate conference held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (COP27). The wet squib UN conference was this year’s major climate change get-together, the twenty-seventh one held since the Rio de Janeiro climate summit of 1992. IN HIS SPEECH welcoming attendees, Egyptian President El-Sisa said:

 

“In 2015, the world came together and showed the will to make the necessary compromises which led to the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement. Today and in light of the unmistakable messages in the recent IPCC reports, and following COP26 in Glasgow, we are once again called upon to act rapidly if we are to really meet the 1.5-degree goal, build our resilience, and enhance our capacity to adapt…As incoming Presidency Egypt will spare no effort to ensure that COP27 becomes the moment when the world moved from negotiation to implementation and where words were translated to actions, and where we collectively embarked on a path towards sustainability, a just transition and eventually a greener future for coming generations.” (Dictator President Abdel Fattah El-Sisa.)

 

SO, I’M GLAD  the climate thingy is going to be solved soon! As far as the second cop (COP15) goes, it is currently being held in Montreal (Dec 7-19).* This COP (COP stands for “Conference of the Parties”) is a gathering of scientists and others to discuss biodiversity:

 

“COP15 is shorthand for the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a two-week summit…. It will be the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade with countries hoping to strike a deal on protecting and restoring nature.” (Zurich.com)

 

I GUESS this means any issues around earth’s plants, animals, and the multitude of living organisms we share the biosphere with, and our use and abuse of them, are going to be resolved shortly, as well. Well, that’s a relief! Now we can get back to our unchecked consumerism, ecological overshoot⁺, over-population, and war making (nuclear or otherwise). The year is Twenty-Twenty-Two. Is that too many twos or too few? Do we need to add a couple of centuries to get things done or have we done enough? Should 2222 be the deadline for zero carbon emissions? Take your pick.

I KNOW I’m playing around here, but at least it’s only with words. THE TWO “COPS” ON THE BEAT this year are meant to make changes that will affect every living thing in our world. The arrangements national delegates decide upon and the treaties they sign are important and can affect things in big ways. HOWEVER, a fly in the ointment, for me, is how there are so many fossil fuel lobbyists invited to these environmental talk-shops: At COP27 last month there were over 600 representatives from oil and gas companies and related industries, a 25% increase from last year’s COP!

 

QUESTION: Why are they even invited? Aren’t they part of the problem world governments are trying to solve? It’s like hiring the Pink Panther as chief curator at the Louvre!

I HAVEN’T YET FOUND any figures on attendees for the Montreal CBD (Convention on Biodiversity) meeting but there is a huge number of coming to Montreal, some 20,000!¹ (The conference was originally intended to be held in Kunming, but pandemic lock-down restrictions in China made it impossible for that city to host the event, and Montreal was chosen as a substitute.) And dollars to doughnuts, there will be a similar percentage of delegates from fossil fuel, Big Ag, Big Pharma, etc. attending the two-week conference. QUESTION: Can we not make any arrangements on how to live sustainably on our planet without vested interests like oil and gas corporations providing their input? Surely, we can.²

 

COP27 IN EGYPT did have one outcome that commentators agree will be helpful (potentially) in the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change globally: Delegates from 190 countries agreed to the establishment of a reparations fund for Loss and Damage due to the impacts of climate change on the Global South which, historically, has carbon emissions orders of magnitude smaller than that of the industrialized North, especially on a per capita basis. 

Economist Jeffry Sachs (at the 15:00 minute of the video) articulates a clear and concise case for reparative justice and the need to compensate poor, southern countries that have been disproportionately affected by the ravages of a changing climate system, caused chiefly by northern CO₂ emissions. HE SAYS that such reparations must be immediate and robust and not be merely token amounts or loans, or other financial vehicles that come with strings attached. And they must be in addition to funding for future climate mitigation initiatives like developing solar power industries or promoting ecological farming practices. HOWEVER, critics argue the deal is less ground-breaking than it seems. Rich countries and their lobbyists (including Canada) hammered out an agreement to establish such a fund, but without any monies committed, nor was any mechanism established, as Sachs³ argues for, to adjudicate what would be fair and equitable compensation for (decades?) of what I’ll call climate abuse on the part of the industrialized North. Incidentally, the United States refused to sign off on any reparations package, as it has for decades done with similar initiatives, though US climate representative John Kerry said his government is willing to “continue talks” on the matter. How galling! 

 

OTHER RESOLUTIONS at the summit included the goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less, though this was negotiated despite considerable push-back from delegates who felt such a goal was too ambitious. However, a resolution to “cause emissions to peak by 2025” was rejected for inclusion in the final agreement, to the dismay of many activists. Similar problematic resolutions include defining natural gas as a “low emissions energy” against arguments by climate activists to have it labelled for what it is, namely, a “fossil fuel.” As well, language around phasing “down” the use of fossil fuels instead of the much stronger wording phasing “out” of fossil fuels, remained unchanged from last year's document in the final, non-binding treaty.

Yada-yada-yada. So much hoopla, so few results. We’d better get cracking terra-forming Mars; we may need to relocate soon!

 

IT IS INDEED FRUSTRATING to see so little progress being made on what is, for all intents and purposes, an existential threat for humanity and the myriad species we share our planet with. Sometimes, I feel like screaming! As do many of us, I’m sure.⁴

 

I’LL STOP HERE AND MAYBE DO a follow-up post on the COP15 Convention on Biodiversity shindig currently going on in Montreal. What are the odds that it will be a limp noodle like COP27? Thousands attend these rodeos—scientists, lobbyists, minsters of state, world leaders, the good, the bad and the ugly from our current crop of global elites—what will they accomplish? Anything? Or will they just re-shuffle deckchairs on the Titanic?  

 

Cheers, Jake.

______________________________

 

* It’s a crisis for humans. Planet Earth will survive just fine without us.

 

⁺ “OVERSHOOT” DEFINITION: “[G]rowth beyond an area’s carrying capacity” (i.e., the “maximum permanently supportable load”), leading to a “crash” or “die-off”. William R Catton from his landmark book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. (University of Illinois Press, 1982.)

 

1.  THERE WAS a similar number attending last month’s COP27. I wonder what the carbon footprint is for these two conferences. I’m guessing it's a Bigfoot! 

 

2.   Read here a short article about the oil pirates’ sector's agenda at COP27.

 

3. SACHS suggests a starting date to calculate compensation from might be from the year 1992. That was the year of the Rio Earth Summit on climate change—the first time the threat of “global warming” etc., was formally recognized by the world’s nation states.  He suggests there could be an even earlier date—1898 when Swedish scientist SVANTE AUGUST ARRHENIUS first postulated the theory that human activities (i.e., burning fossils fuels) could lead to a warming of the planet, though I think Sachs is being tongue-in-cheek here. I like 1988, the year NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) scientist JAMES HANSEN gave a speech before a congressional committee where he outlined the dangers of rising carbon levels in the atmosphere and popularized the term “global warming”. Of course, there are other possible starting points. 

 

4. ON THE FLIP SIDE: Some suggestions to aid in the struggle against global warming were put forward in recent op-ed pieces by British environmentalist George Monbiot and American lawyer Steven Donziger.  MONBIOT proposes a radical shift in how the world grows its PROTEIN using what he calls “precision fermentation." He recons it would cut dramatically carbon emissions stemming from agricultural and animal husbandry practices. Read another  article on the same topic here.

STEVEN DONZIGER’S recent New York Times’ piece suggests legal solutions to climate change and habitat destruction. He suggests making “ecocide” an internationally recognized crime in the same way as genocide is an actionable offence today. He has other interesting ideas here. (BTW, Donziger fought a legal battle for years against the Chevron Oil corporation and its failure to compensate indigenous Ecuadorian tribes for polluting their traditional lands. He was subjected to egregious legal persecution by the oil giant, to the extent he was put under house arrest for over a year! He has only recently regained his freedom.)

 

Here is a helpful video from Extinction Rebellion’s Clare Farrell in conversation with conservation scientist Charlie Gardener where they discuss the COP27 summit—the good, the bad, and the definitely ugly. 

 

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! 

 

See videos of recent rallies in NYC & London in support of the Wikileaks publisher here. [BTW, Donziger is the tall, smiling man behind the speaker, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal at the NYC rally.]