For those who follow the news only intermittently, the news this week that COP 28 was on the verge of collapse without a deal might have come as a surprise. To those of us who recall COPs going back as far as COP 13 (which was billed, naturally, as the last real chance to save the planet) the news that the conference is on the verge of collapse was as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.
The psychology of COP conferences, with their mission to save the planet, requires a little bit of drama. The protagonists assemble – goodies (usually liberal European countries allied with a phalanx of western green NGOs, with support from the UN) and baddies (usually the USA and the arab states) in a great weeks-long theatrical production in which the pre-ordained outcome is a last minute deal that falls short of what the heroes might have sought, but nevertheless averts disaster for another year, until COP 29.
That, of course, is exactly what we got this morning.
For the media, and politicians, the whole thing is irresistible: There’s Eamon Ryan, shirt sleeves rolled up, working until 3am in the morning trying to lever some truculent American into ponying up another ten billion dollars in climate aid for Africa. Here’s Greta Thunberg, rallying the hopeful youth of the world with another speech about what we might achieve if only our leaders cared about the planet. Look hither at George Lee, face grave and stern as he talks through your television about the real risk now that human selfishness on behalf of rich (read: evil) countries might stop all hope of averting 1.5 degrees of warming. And then, on the last day, the deal: Solemn (but conspicuously non-binding) commitments are made. Hands are shaken. George Monbiot writes a column in the Guardian denouncing the deal as falling short, but politicians declare a step on the road to ultimate victory. We all agree to start the planning now for the next COP, when the real showdown will happen.
You could script it. You might even wonder if somebody does.
In a Pew Poll earlier this year, the US public was asked to rank their political priorities: “Climate Change” ranked fifth from bottom, ahead only of the waning coronavirus pandemic, addressing issues around race, “dealing with issues facing parents”, and dealing with global trade. The top priority for voters was “strengthening the US economy”, followed by “reducing healthcare costs” and “defending against terrorism”. To the journalists and activists at COP, their mission might well be the most important on the planet – but the US voters simply are not buying it.
In China, of course, there is no such thing as “voters” in the sense that we understand the term in the west. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party essentially views foreign policy as a public relations exercise to facilitate their true goal, which is to turn China into the world’s foremost power economically and militarily. To that end, China has long had a simple and singular Climate policy: Demand that the west does most of the heavy lifting, while China is permitted to “catch up” with the west economically – even if that means opening hundreds of new coal power plants, or emitting more and more plastic into the ocean annually. While Europe contracts its manufacturing sector in order to combat climate change, China expands its own.
Across the world, Climate Change remains the ultimate “luxury issue” – something that people care about when they can afford to care about it, or when they are too young to yet have more pressing concerns of their own. Concern about climate change is concentrated in almost every poll in these two demographics: The wealthy upper middle classes, and the youngest voters who’ve yet to encounter more pressing issues like the cost of childcare or the interest rate on mortgages.
It is also a political position overtly associated with virtue: Nobody upon nobody wants to tell a pollster that they do not care about the planet, so polls asking people directly if they care about stopping climate change are guaranteed to get bumper agreement.
You see fewer polls asking people if, for example, they are willing to sacrifice their car or their freedom to fly overseas in the name of stopping climate change.
This is why, as the years pass, the climate movement is becoming more authoritarian. It is, in a sense, only natural: If you sincerely believe (as Eamon Ryan does, for example) that flying and driving must stop to save the planet, and you see that voters are unwilling to do it, then the logical conclusion at which you must arrive is that since voters cannot be trusted to save themselves, voters must be saved from themselves. And if they do not wish to be, tough. You don’t ask permission before pushing somebody out of the way of an oncoming train. That’s the thinking.
It is also a large part of the growing impetus to restrict speech, and freedom more generally: Already in Ireland, RTE has been entirely co-opted to serve the planet, to the extent that perspectives questioning the Climate Change agenda are literally prohibited from the national broadcaster’s airwaves – the only such policy to get that treatment (though many more are of course unofficially prohibited). It underpins a lot of the present western push to regulate “misinformation” and “disinformation”. Though we hear these terms mostly in relation to immigration, make no mistake that popular tweets and social media posts questioning the COP agenda are a particular bugbear of those who wish to control and restrict the flow of information.
The problem, ultimately, is that it cannot work: Western Europe alone cannot “save the planet” in the terms that the Climate Scientists say are necessary in order to avoid disaster. The USA will not do it – its voters are just as likely to elect either a Republican President or a Republican Congress as they are to elect Democrats next year. Even at that, Climate has always been a low priority for even Joe Biden.
And China? China is openly committed to continuing to increase its own emissions for years yet to come. That’s the single largest polluter on the planet. Brazil plans to increase its cattle herd by almost double. African countries are determined to grow themselves economically, whatever the climate cost.
Put all of this together, and what you get at COP is what you always get at COP: A stage-managed production designed to keep hope alive, and convey a sense of progress over adversity. We’ll be back at it again, next year, in Azerbaijan. Just as we were here last year.