Party Like There’s No Tomorrow. There Probably Isn’t.

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Protesters at an Amsterdam airport attempt to prevent the departure of a fleet of private jets bound for COP27, the annual UN meeting to discuss how to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

COP27 — the United Nations’ celebration of the 27th consecutive successful year in the war on climate change — is wrapping up its second successful week. Some one hundred heads of state and 45,000 delegates from 200 countries flocked (in, among other conveyances, 400 private jet aircraft) to the largest and most luxurious resort and conference center in all of Africa and the Middle East, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (where hotel rooms go for $300 a night and sandwiches for $15). There they lapped up cocktails, feasted, and carped about the wretched state of the world’s climate. 

 This COP has been quite different from the preceding 26. There are so far no ringing resolutions about reducing fossil fuel use, or meeting previously declared goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “The participants,” according to Perspective “are barely trying to give the impression that they are doing anything about the climate catastrophe.” They have apparently abandoned the goal set by the 2015 Paris Treaty on Climate Change — to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And they are reluctant to talk about the fallback position, a limit of 2 degrees C. 

Even Greta Thunberg has given up on the COP shindig, calling it a forum for “greenwashing”.

US Climate “Czar” John Kerry floated an old, oft-tried, complicated scheme to create a bank trading in carbon credits — at which large polluters could purchase credits from small polluters and keep on polluting — in order to raise money with which poorer nations could fight climate change. Hilarity ensued. 

The whole vast soiree is stumbling to a conclusion in a few days, having agreed for the 27th consecutive time that climate change is a really bad thing and someone ought to do something about it. Just not me, not now.

While  they were carousing, a new international study projected that global emissions of greenhouse gasses will reach an all-time high this year, increasing a percentage point over last year. Except for a brief downward blip in 2020, the Year of the COVID Plague, and the Great Recession circa 2009, there has not been a decline in emissions in the entire history of the United Nations’ meetings on the subject. 

Also while they were meeting, the World Meteorological Organization reported that the last eight years have been the hottest ever recorded on the planet.

T]he unprecedented global temperatures were “fueled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat. Extreme heatwaves, drought, and devastating flooding have affected millions and cost billions this year.”  

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened COP27 by telling the assembled oligarchs that the entire world is on a “highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The fight for a livable planet, he said, “will be won or lost in this decade.” He called on the delegates to craft an “historic pact” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “You must stand and deliver,” he said.

Apparently there was a problem in the translation. The delegates all seemed to think he said, “sit down and have another drink, everything is going to be fine.” And that is what they did. A fine fellow, the Secretary-General.