Before the leaders of the world descended on Glasgow to discuss saving the world in the 26th COP Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of All Bits of the UK and Some Former Colonies was overheard saying “It’s really irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.”
Her Majesty’s irritation was justified. The largest delegation was from a newly greenwashed fossil fuel industry. But they wasted their tickets, they weren’t needed. The leaders of the world (or those that turned up) had no intention of doing anything other than talking anyway.
The sum of the fortnight’s achievement was that the nations of the world agreed to mention that fossil fuels were a problem in writing. Imagine if it took the crew of the Titanic 30 years to mention a hole in the hull was a problem? China and the US agreed to talk to each other. There was a bit of talk about giving money to poor countries to deal with the catastrophe that awaits us. We’ve made promises on that before, but not kept them. There were a few promises on trees. We can put them in the bag with the other promises.
That Xi Jinping didn’t bother to turn up at least saved his plane’s exhaust.
The impending disaster to the world is plain to see. What we need to do to limit (we can no longer avert) global warming is plain to see. What we need to do to limit its damage is plain to see. Why are our great leaders so incapable of doing any of it?
Maybe they’re not so great.
This isn’t new. Romans argued amongst themselves while Hannibal destroyed them, Europeans gave Hitler all he wanted while the future was writ large – “Peace in our time” anyone? The issue seems to be small imaginations and fear. Bizarrely it’s scarier for Modi or Xi or Biden to face domestic displeasure in the next three or four years than the end of the world as we know it for their children and grandchildren.
The takeaway is that our current bunch are incapable of strategic thinking. Our children and grandchildren will curse us for putting them there.
In a perverse way it may almost be good that nobody did anything useful. Imagine the global lesson if western democracies were unable to write their own name, but China and the bullish autocracies marched in and saved the world. Which system of government would be proven the most effective? That remains a hypothetical question.
That the Johnson administration put so little effort in hasn’t helped. Anyone who’s been to a meeting knows they’re not for deciding things, meetings are for approving things that have already been worked out and decided in the corridors and bars. The French put their former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius in charge of COP21, he spent a year negotiating and came up with the Paris Agreement. Alok Sharma’s one of the better Tory goons, but not in Fabius’s league. Nor any of his peers.
The BBC interviewed locals on the street as the party wound down. Given the location I have to assume this gentleman, who summarised proceedings so well, was unwitting in paraphrasing the Queen:
“Yes there’s an answer!
Git yer fingers oot yer arse an’ stop talkin’ bout what yer gonna do and do-at”