Every year the climate COP is followed by complaints about how little has been achieved, praise for the small amount that has been achieved and resolutions to do better next time. Well-informed people such as Rachel Kyte, some from climate-aware governments, can be heard saying how hard it is to get broad agreement on difficult issues. This sounds sensible.
But its bullshit.
The truth – as everyone knows – is that the COP process has been sabotaged by countries that want, very much, for there NOT to be an effective agreement to reduce emissions. They are the petrostates and the big fossil fuel companies, the ‘Big Heaters’. The leading petrostate is Saudi Arabia, though in the last year the USA has become the most effective climate saboteur. (We all know why.)
For the saboteurs, every year without an effective agreement is another year of selling coal, gas and oil and everything made from them. Those things include plastics, fertilisers, tar and lubricants. They form a big slice of the global economy.
It’s often said that the climate saboteurs have been successful because COP rules require unanimity but that’s a bit superficial. They have also succeeded because in many countries they have paid taxes and created jobs for decades. Those countries have been reluctant to challenge such generous corporate citizens.
And where taxes and jobs have not been enough they have been able to bribe countries, parties and politicians who might oppose them. Or just invade them.
The saboteurs have often felt the need for support from people who not directly employed. There are openly paid sabotage enablers in the engineering, investment, policy and insurance sectors.
And in case that wasn’t enough there is a loose network of academics, think tanks and political parties that benefit from the largesse of the petrostates and the Big Heaters. They can be relied on to claim that climate change isn’t real, or doesn’t matter, or can’t be avoided, or on which action should be delayed until – well – something else happens. Anything but support the crisis action that is already overdue.
There’s much more to say but it will have to wait.
I finish with this. We must stop talking about climate policy failures as if they were honest errors. They aren’t. They are the results of sabotage by vested interests which must be called out and resisted.
