The likeliest probability from COP28 was an agreement that gives accolades to Al Jaber, OPEC, and the other FF interests that care far more about their own wallets than the health of the environment but does very little to actually move the needle on global carbon emissions for a couple of decades.
That was the agreement put forth by these guys at first – and the island nations and several European countries said they wouldn’t stand for it.
Major media is spouting words like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘ breakthrough’ right now. Honestly, that just makes me more depressed – when the big guys in 2023 are saying a vague, non-binding acknowledgement that we need to move away from fossil fuels in a ‘just’ manner is a massive accomplishment, you know we’re several decades behind where we need to be at the highest levels. I’d be happier if we saw things for what they are – at least then we’d be realistic about how much more we need to do.
Exxon is massively expanding in 2024 in the Permian, the UAE and other OPEC nations get to continue business as usual for an indefinite period of time, ‘transition fuels’ like natural gas get the green light – but world leaders finally accept that fossil fuels are polluting and we need to stop that at some point in time – what an unprecedented breakthrough.
.05% of the people at COP28 are scientists.
The world that gives fossil fuel corporations $7 trillion/yr fossil fuel subsidies and $6 trillion/yr in externalities has promised $700 million for the Loss & Damage Fund, 0.005% of what it’s paying fossil fuel corporations to cause the crisis. The US has promised $420 million, .02% of its yearly public military budget, but the country has paid less than half of its equally pitiful commitment to the Green Climate Fund, so it would be dumb to count on anything.
28 still wasn’t the most embarrassing & dismal failure. Paris was, followed by Copenhagen. Above all the failure’s been because of the US’s bribing, bullying & extorting of the entire assembly including 100 smaller countries who knew better but surrendered to the reality of that relentless assault anyway.
It’s almost like they knew the fix was in.
All along, under every president since 1996, the US government has been in this deal only to blunt & slow the replacement of fossil fuels with efficiency, wiser lives, and clean safe fast cheap reliable renewable energy.
“The only global negotiations that are organised like the climate summits are other environmental summits, such as the UN biodiversity conferences. When states want something to happen – trade agreements, for example – they use different methods. The failure of the Cop meetings is baked in.”
The Guardian Dec. 9, 2023
Not only was failure a precondition, COP28—and others?—have been used as a cover for making deals to cement and expand humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels. Both big parties in the US have been abetting US corporations in that expansion, even as Democrats have repeated many times pledges to 1.5 & other goals they had already made impossible. (There are other guarantees of failure, like the need for every party to go home from the COPs & trumpet an agreement, no matter what of. But agreement on conflicting impossible goals is impossible. Without coercion, collaboration of the corporate media and a willingly deceived public, none of this could happen.
“Internal records leaked by a whistleblower show that Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber—who is simultaneously serving as CEO of ADNOC, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president of COP28—used meetings about the upcoming United Nations climate summit to push foreign governments for fossil fuel deals.”
“‘A Real Scandal’: COP28 President Used Role to Pursue Fossil Fuel Deals”
“This is exactly the kind of conflict of interest we feared when the CEO of an oil company was appointed to the role,” said a Greenpeace campaigner. https://www.commondreams.org/news/uae-cop28-deals
The planet was set up; they’ve all been dirty COPs since the first. Many people wanted the process to be real and effective; 100 small poor countries who have caused the ecological crisis the least, wanted a firm Paris goal of the already-too-dangerous 1.5°. The US, with the apparent approval of other rich countries, pressured those countries into settling for 1.5 as a Potemkin goal, with a back up Potemkin goal of 2, and a real goal of continuing, even expanding, coal, oil, & gas operations forever, no matter what the consequences. NDCs were voluntary & egregiously inadequate to meet the fake & unsafe 2° goal, let alone the fake & unsafe 1.5 goal. All the major emitter countries’ lives & policies are leading us to 4 or 5°C over preindustrial temperature (except India at 2°). Those temperatures lead to tipping points and even higher temperatures, and the certain end of civilization and most life on Earth, and likely human extinction.
“Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds”
The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2018
“Could climate tipping points lead to collapse of human civilisation?”
Adam Vaughan, New Scientist, 27 November 2019
“A team of influential scientists has warned that the world faces the risk of “an existential threat to civilization” due to mounting evidence that tipping points in the climate and nature are likely to be breached.
“We are now a little over 10 years on. The nasty surprise for me was a lot of the things we identified as potential tipping points that many would have thought were far in the future now show evidence of already being active,” says [the report’s lead author] Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, UK.”
“The climate has warmed so much that we are already at risk of triggering five global “tipping points” that would have catastrophic effects worldwide and couldn’t be reversed easily if at all, according to a major report. As the world goes past 1.5°C of warming, it will be increasingly likely that we will cross these tipping points, and there will be a growing risk of this resulting in others as well.”
Nevertheless, the corruption will continue:
“Thanks to Russia vetoing the conference being held in any country that opposed its invasion of Ukraine, it’s likely that Azerbaijan will be chosen to host next year’s COP29 gathering. That would make it the third big oil and gas producer in a row to host the conference.”
Coal, oil, & gas corporation employees will again vastly outnumber scientists. Politicians owned by the FF industry will be as pervasive as an untreated virus. COG money will again vastly outnumber all other funds. Protests will again be prophylactically castrated in yet another authoritarian country without press freedom.
Unless someone stops it beforehand.
COP28 and the entire process is already a failure. The best we can hope for is an obvious, public, complete collapse in rancorous contention. If we push hard enough, there’s some possibility that other mor effective means of preventing catastrophe can be forged.
We’re facing a dire emergency. The utterly corrupt people who rule the world will never give up power & will never allow effective solutions as long as they have power. Given those 3 facts, is it really that hard to figure out what we have to do?
The likeliest probability from COP28 was an agreement that gives accolades to Al Jaber, OPEC, and the other FF interests that care far more about their own wallets than the health of the environment but does very little to actually move the needle on global carbon emissions for a couple of decades.
That was the agreement put forth by these guys at first – and the island nations and several European countries said they wouldn’t stand for it.
That’s actually good news.
Well, they just passed the expected tepid deal and then gave themselves massive congratulations. They did it without the island nations even in the room:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/cop28-climate-summit-pacific-islands-lash-out-at-final-deal.html
Major media is spouting words like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘ breakthrough’ right now. Honestly, that just makes me more depressed – when the big guys in 2023 are saying a vague, non-binding acknowledgement that we need to move away from fossil fuels in a ‘just’ manner is a massive accomplishment, you know we’re several decades behind where we need to be at the highest levels. I’d be happier if we saw things for what they are – at least then we’d be realistic about how much more we need to do.
Exxon is massively expanding in 2024 in the Permian, the UAE and other OPEC nations get to continue business as usual for an indefinite period of time, ‘transition fuels’ like natural gas get the green light – but world leaders finally accept that fossil fuels are polluting and we need to stop that at some point in time – what an unprecedented breakthrough.
.05% of the people at COP28 are scientists.
The world that gives fossil fuel corporations $7 trillion/yr fossil fuel subsidies and $6 trillion/yr in externalities has promised $700 million for the Loss & Damage Fund, 0.005% of what it’s paying fossil fuel corporations to cause the crisis. The US has promised $420 million, .02% of its yearly public military budget, but the country has paid less than half of its equally pitiful commitment to the Green Climate Fund, so it would be dumb to count on anything.
28 still wasn’t the most embarrassing & dismal failure. Paris was, followed by Copenhagen. Above all the failure’s been because of the US’s bribing, bullying & extorting of the entire assembly including 100 smaller countries who knew better but surrendered to the reality of that relentless assault anyway.
It’s almost like they knew the fix was in.
All along, under every president since 1996, the US government has been in this deal only to blunt & slow the replacement of fossil fuels with efficiency, wiser lives, and clean safe fast cheap reliable renewable energy.
“The only global negotiations that are organised like the climate summits are other environmental summits, such as the UN biodiversity conferences. When states want something to happen – trade agreements, for example – they use different methods. The failure of the Cop meetings is baked in.”
The Guardian Dec. 9, 2023
Not only was failure a precondition, COP28—and others?—have been used as a cover for making deals to cement and expand humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels. Both big parties in the US have been abetting US corporations in that expansion, even as Democrats have repeated many times pledges to 1.5 & other goals they had already made impossible. (There are other guarantees of failure, like the need for every party to go home from the COPs & trumpet an agreement, no matter what of. But agreement on conflicting impossible goals is impossible. Without coercion, collaboration of the corporate media and a willingly deceived public, none of this could happen.
“Internal records leaked by a whistleblower show that Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber—who is simultaneously serving as CEO of ADNOC, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president of COP28—used meetings about the upcoming United Nations climate summit to push foreign governments for fossil fuel deals.”
“‘A Real Scandal’: COP28 President Used Role to Pursue Fossil Fuel Deals”
“This is exactly the kind of conflict of interest we feared when the CEO of an oil company was appointed to the role,” said a Greenpeace campaigner.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/uae-cop28-deals
The planet was set up; they’ve all been dirty COPs since the first. Many people wanted the process to be real and effective; 100 small poor countries who have caused the ecological crisis the least, wanted a firm Paris goal of the already-too-dangerous 1.5°. The US, with the apparent approval of other rich countries, pressured those countries into settling for 1.5 as a Potemkin goal, with a back up Potemkin goal of 2, and a real goal of continuing, even expanding, coal, oil, & gas operations forever, no matter what the consequences. NDCs were voluntary & egregiously inadequate to meet the fake & unsafe 2° goal, let alone the fake & unsafe 1.5 goal. All the major emitter countries’ lives & policies are leading us to 4 or 5°C over preindustrial temperature (except India at 2°). Those temperatures lead to tipping points and even higher temperatures, and the certain end of civilization and most life on Earth, and likely human extinction.
“Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds”
The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2018
“Could climate tipping points lead to collapse of human civilisation?”
Adam Vaughan, New Scientist, 27 November 2019
“A team of influential scientists has warned that the world faces the risk of “an existential threat to civilization” due to mounting evidence that tipping points in the climate and nature are likely to be breached.
“We are now a little over 10 years on. The nasty surprise for me was a lot of the things we identified as potential tipping points that many would have thought were far in the future now show evidence of already being active,” says [the report’s lead author] Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, UK.”
“The climate has warmed so much that we are already at risk of triggering five global “tipping points” that would have catastrophic effects worldwide and couldn’t be reversed easily if at all, according to a major report. As the world goes past 1.5°C of warming, it will be increasingly likely that we will cross these tipping points, and there will be a growing risk of this resulting in others as well.”
Nevertheless, the corruption will continue:
“Thanks to Russia vetoing the conference being held in any country that opposed its invasion of Ukraine, it’s likely that Azerbaijan will be chosen to host next year’s COP29 gathering. That would make it the third big oil and gas producer in a row to host the conference.”
Coal, oil, & gas corporation employees will again vastly outnumber scientists. Politicians owned by the FF industry will be as pervasive as an untreated virus. COG money will again vastly outnumber all other funds. Protests will again be prophylactically castrated in yet another authoritarian country without press freedom.
Unless someone stops it beforehand.
COP28 and the entire process is already a failure. The best we can hope for is an obvious, public, complete collapse in rancorous contention. If we push hard enough, there’s some possibility that other mor effective means of preventing catastrophe can be forged.
We’re facing a dire emergency. The utterly corrupt people who rule the world will never give up power & will never allow effective solutions as long as they have power. Given those 3 facts, is it really that hard to figure out what we have to do?