Climate Conferences and Other Silly Shenanigans

Hubris, hypocrisy, harebrained hooliganism, and hot air.

Well, COP27 is finally a wrap in Egypt, and during those pivotal and significant two weeks, the earth has crept that much closer to that terrifying tipping point of climate catastrophe from which there will surely be no return.

I always look forward to the yearly Conference of Parties, also known this year as COP27.

All the beautiful people arriving in their million dollar thundering and extravagant private jets and their fossil-fuelled motorcades of luxury vehicles. Tuxedos and ball gowns galore, everyone there to see and be seen. It's like the senior prom at the most upscale, private institution, or the 40th anniversary celebrations of that same Class of ‘82.

Everyone who is anyone is there and I'm sure none of them would even blink at spending £2,000 per night for a room at the Steigenberger Alcazar hotel, even if that price drops to £280 at the end of the month. This particular hotel is undoubtedly at or near the top of the heap, but regardless of the other available options, you can expect that one to have been booked solid months in advance, not necessarily in spite of the cost, but possibly even because of it. These are people spending other people's money, remember.

There are a couple of notable absences this year, namely the two Kings - Charles and Justin. Whereas King Charles has been banned from attending by his own government, Justin Trudeau, the boy Climate King himself was busy representing Canada at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. If you were hoping (as I was) that Trudeau's absence at COP27 would mean a possible reprieve of yet another embarrassing moment for us unwitting Canadians, once again our hopes were dashed after video emerged of Trudeau being soundly chastised by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

I have one question:

If the King of frickin’ England can be banned from attending these types of events because it is “not the right occasion” for him, why on God's green earth do we allow our guy to even leave his house? But I digress…

While one might hope to bump into Leonardo DiCaprio or other celebs at this momentous event, another notable skipper is the Climate Queen, Greta Thunberg. According to Greta, “The Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention.” No shit? Maybe Greta and I have something in common after all.

Though our boxed-water-drinking, surf-board-weilding Prime Minister may not be there in all his glory, never fear because we did manage to send a healthy delegation full of heavy hitters to take his place.

Steven Guilbeault, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Canada is leading the charge to COP27. At his right hand will be Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change, Catherine Stewart and bringing up the rear, we’ll have none other than Steven Kuhn, Canada’s Chief Negotiator for Climate Change.

Surely such a powerful trio of climate change ministers, climate ambassadors, and climate negotiators has never dared venture across the mighty ocean to see Canada's interests represented at such a noble gathering.

Lest you think this bunch were the only Canadians there, let me put your wondering minds at ease. These three were of course the primary, essential, and generally highly esteemed folks with curiously long climate titles after their names. In all there were actually 335 chosen ones who made the trek from the great white north to the land of the Pharaohs. One count put the number of jets arriving for the conference at over 400. One wonders how many jets it took to fly 335 first class delegates from Canada, assuming that certain government standards must be upheld.

So, even though your favourite celebrity may not be present in the flesh at COP27 this year (and in case you're actually concerned about that), thanks to a new development over at ArcticRiskName.org, these celebrities can still make a difference. That's right, instead of chartering their own private jet and flying halfway round the globe, they can now simply change their names to protest climate change and they don't even need to leave their mansions to do it. Now you too can join the likes of Rainn Wilson (star of The Office) and others in making a bold statement that will surely make a difference in tackling climate change.

Just for fun (and because my curiosity got the better of me), I had to check out ArcticRiskName.org. According to their website,

“If you become an Arctic name changer, it can be a real game changer.”

Wow, who knew it was so easy to save the planet? And it rhymes too.

After that clever little intro is a box where you can give up your current name in exchange for a brand new one that will “raise awareness” and “make an impact”.

As I said, it's just for fun, so I had to have several goes at it. Sadly, I fear the only “impact” this would have is to show all my friends on social media what a moron I am, and that's really not the kind of “awareness” I'm looking at raising right now. Because of that, I decided against taking their advice to change all my social media profiles to reflect my new name. But really, Terrible Tornados Hiebert does have a nice ring to it…

So, all fun and games aside, if you happen to be someone who doesn't live with one foot in the world of social media and the other one in your parents’ basement, then you might find all this bullshit to be, well, somewhat bullshitty.

It's always hard to say what kind of success these meetings have. That is, if you read the news reports. However, if one were to look at the actual numbers that describe GHGs (that's greenhouse gas emissions if you're not hip to the lingo) and the amount of CO2 in the air, then it's actually pretty easy to see that they do absolutely nothing except to add more GHGs and more CO2 to our atmosphere. Well, I suppose the entertainment value has some merit, so it's not a total loss.

At the conference itself, it seemed like one of the major sticking points this year was getting everyone to agree on the arbitrary goal of 1.5 degrees. I’ve recently learned that this is now the shorthand for “keeping global temperature within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels”. I think the reason this was a hard sell this year is because we've basically already failed at that, so to keep that as a goal would be a little bit like saying your goal is to not have a second piece of cake for breakfast while you're halfway through your second piece of cake.

How does the average human relate to this? Obviously they don't. At all. And the reason they don't is because the average person is way more concerned with simply paying the rent or their mortgage and getting enough food to eat. Then maybe if they're really lucky they can decide to worry (or not worry) about that second piece of cake.

When you look at polls and studies telling you how much people worry about climate change, you'll find that apparently the vast majority of people are very concerned about our future on this planet. Heres the thing though: when you consider how the media has covered this topic over the last decade or so, how could you expect anything else? It's really a vicious circle that looks something like this:

1. The government and/or media do a story on how horrible everything is.

2. They do a poll or commission a study that shows how scared everyone is because of what they heard on the news.

3. They then report on that study and it totally confirms everyone's worst fears. And then guess what?

4. People start freaking out because of how horrible everything is.

And this cycle is repeated ad nauseam. It might be the closest thing to perpetual motion we’ll ever see.

As for the supposed minority that aren't crying in their beers about our imminent demise, you can see how this just adds one more reason why their trust in media is at such a dismal low.

One thing that's being touted as a “breakthrough deal” at COP27 this week is the establishment of a “loss and damage” agreement, which would basically just “urge” rich countries to give more money to poor countries to offset the alleged damages that they (the rich countries) have caused by doing what rich countries do. You know, things like developing new technologies, coming up with better ways to build stuff, creating medicines and vaccines to keep millions of people from dying, and growing and exporting food for the entire world.

Of course this “urging” doesn't extend to countries like China, which has the second largest economy in the world, and is also responsible for contributing a full 25% of the world's GHGs. This is mainly on account of their use of coal because hey, coal works really well and it's really cheap too. This is very likely the reason China is still building brand new coal-fired power plants. Also, this breakthrough deal doesn't specifically restrict the recipients of this funding to those countries that are most vulnerable. So it's well within the realm of possibility that China itself may yet benefit from this fund.

Interestingly, Canada contributes approximately 1.5% of the world's GHGs and yes, we will now be contributing to a fund that might possibly be used to help China recover from the “damage” that we've caused.

All this is par for the course in the world of climate politics. What's also on par here is the intolerable hubris which is always on full display. One would think that after decades of what could only be described as abject dismal failure (at least in terms of even coming close to meeting any of their “climate targets” and doing anything to stem the flow of GHGs, let alone turning down the thermostat) - you'd think there might be a bit of a different tone from these people by now. So sorry to disappoint, but honesty and realism are apparently not part of the mandate there.

Just to drive this point home, here are some of the “mic-drop” moments from the last couple of weeks:

From António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations:

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

Continuing the fire and brimstone theme with a happy ending, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission:

“The global fossil fuel crisis must be a game-changer. So let us not take the ‘highway to hell’ but let’s earn the clean ticket to heaven.”

If she's wanting to be a game changer, maybe someone ought to introduce Ursula to ArcticRiskName.org…

Here's a particularly juicy one from Faustin Archange Touadera, President of Central African Republic

"We should say clearly the rich countries – the top polluters – are the ones who are most to blame for endangering humanity.”

In case you're curious, the Central African Republic’s biggest import by far, is Refined Petroleum, followed by Packaged Medicaments (so like, Tylenol or something), Broadcasting Equipment, Vaccines, and Poultry Meat. Can you now see how endangered this country is by those rich polluters?

And Mark Brown, Prime Minister of the Cook Islands felt he had to weigh in on this as well:

“It is up to the G20 countries responsible for 80% of global emissions that we are beholden to for our survival. Our survival is being held to ransom at the cost of profit and an unwillingness to act despite the ability to do so.”

In case you're not aware, this is the country whose biggest imports are oil (surprise), beer, bottled water, and beef. Again, would Mark Brown be grilling that steak and driving his undoubtedly fancy automobile without those countries that are apparently “holding his survival for ransom”? You decide.

And the list wouldn't be complete without Pakistan's Minister of Climate Change, Sherry Rehman. This gets straight to the heart of the issue because this really is the bottom line and the whole real point of these meetings:

“The dystopia has already come to our doorstep … The political advances we make here will have very little meaning on the ground unless there is a transfer of resources that shifts the needle on how people face the future.”

Just for context, Pakistan exports mainly to the US, which means there is lots of US dollars flowing in. And their four biggest imports are: (wait for it) Refined Petroleum, Petroleum Gas, Palm Oil, and Crude Petroleum.

With the current price of oil, it's little wonder these guys are looking for some extra “resources” right now.

I think what all of this tells us (those of us who actually want to know, that is), is that these meetings have two main functions. One of them is what Greta said, and I'll repeat it here in case you've forgotten, and because it's probably the most honest quote to come out of all this :

“The Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention.”

The other reason is summed up in the old, well-worn and downright tired old adage, “Follow the money.”

This is why it matters very little whether there is success or failure on any topic they discuss at these things, unless of course they're talking about the transfer of wealth from developed nations to developing ones. That is a topic for a whole other discussion, but whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing is completely beside the point when they're trying to do it under the guise of “saving the world from climate change” and thinking we’re too stupid to notice.

It's said that the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and if it's also true that pride comes before a fall, then we'd better hang on because this one's going to make quite the crash.