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Delegates to COP26 appear to be working on the problem of climate change.
World leaders have given themselves over to the practice of APPEARING to do something about a problem rather than DOING something. They have done so with such enthusiasm, and for so long now, that they no longer seem to be aware that they are doing it. The reasons are obvious: doing something is invariably expensive, and involves choosing between something and something else, which angers all the supporters of something else. USA is Number One in this practice, of course, but we have taught the rest of the world well. Almost everybody is doing it now, as illustrated wonderfully by the just completed COP26 United Nations conference on (not) dealing with climate change.
Appointing a climate czar is not the same thing as fighting climate change. Having all the climate czars from all the countries in the world fly their private jets to Scotland to discuss reducing carbon emissions does nothing to reduce carbon emissions.
COP26 tried mightily to appear as if it were being stingy with pollution: it ostentatiously served locally sourced vegetarian haggis (that has got to be an oxymoron, right?), pointed out that the toilets were very thrifty with flushing water, and insisted that everyone reuse their coffee cups. Yet the conference was responsible for more carbon pollution than any of the previous 25 — twice as much as the previous two and more than four times the emissions of the three before that.
The point of the conference is to agree on ways to reduce carbon emissions such as aviation carbon offset through experts like CarbonClick.com, so it begins of course with a review of what member nations are emitting now.
Guess what. They lied. The Washington Post found on examining the reports of 196 countries, that almost all of them lied about their carbon emissions, under-reporting them by as little as 8.5 billion to as much as 13.3 billion tons.
The conference glittered with self-congratulatory pledges of what one or another country would do at some time in the future. Most such pledges made in the past have been broken. The attendees congratulated themselves on coming to a specific agreement on coal. It was the first of the 26 conferences to mention coal in its official proceedings. (Sorry. I should have warned you to put on your head vice to prevent explosion.) And what agreement was reached? To effect a “phasedown of unabated coal.” The original draft said “phase out” but that was regarded as too strong. What the word “unabated” means in this context is beyond me.
Pledges and promises abounded: to give more money to poor countries that are suffering from a problem they did not cause; to “revisit and strengthen” previous pledges and promises (don’t you love it? The technique!); there was near hysteria when China (which did not bother to attend the conference) and the United States separately agreed toward the end of the conference to work on, and I quote, “enhanced climate actions.” There. That should do it.
The Los Angeles Times called it “a colossal failure.” The Week called it “a naïve fantasy.” Greta Thunberg called it a “greenwash campaign.” But mostly the industrial media clapped one hand and said the attendees appeared to make progress. That’s right. Appeared.
Well played, ladies and gentlemen.
One thing is for sure. We’re all going to die!
Not all of us, I don’t think….
Agreed – we all are going to die at some point from something – but not all of us are going to die because of climate change….
As inAlaska says, we are all going to die. Some of us before others.
Another thing that is absolutely true … no one will “do” something about AGW. At this point, it is way too late. What will happen is the world will get hotter and hotter due to Anthropogenic forcing until the collapse ends it.
Just as the terminal patient must reach acceptance of the end of their life, humanity must begin now to go through the stages of grief, finally reaching acceptance. Its all over but the crying.
“What the word “unabated” means in this context is beyond me.”
Too funny. Same thing as does in the NFL I suppose, when the referee is forced to blow a play dead, because a defensive player has so flagrantly cheated he has not only jumped offsides, he has jumped so far beyond offsides that he is now moving “unabated toward the quarterback” and must be stopped – for financial reasons, first and foremost.
Solar Radiation Management is coming soon, to planet near you, everything else is Kabuki.
15 years I’ve been writing that sentence, aaaaannnnnd finally, were here.* Now, will Calcium Carbonate break down the O3 molecule? That’s the only RELEVANT questions we humans need an answer to going forward, because if it does, SRM will prove a failure, and humans will go extinct.
There is no backup plan, other than to blast off the Earth in a rocket ship and head for the nearest life giving planet, and hope that your fuel and your lifespan are up to the challenge.
*Were here. When the Pope informs his followers that they are on a “locomotive hurtling straight for the abyss,” and makes it clear he’s talking about the annihilation of our biosphere and not some shapeshifting soul stealer, you know.
I suspect most world leaders and climate tzars know full well that the propitious time to actually do something to address the climate emergency effectively was 4–5 decades ago. Only thing to do now is enact political theater.
Unabated: I see it meaning that that seemingly infinite pile of coal we keep sucking from like a teat with an infinite supply of milk is something we are thinking of not doing as much as we have been doing, not stopping mind you just not being so compulsive about it.