Posters depicting Cop28 president Sultan al-Jaber are displayed at a bus stop outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany. Photo / AP
Posters depicting Cop28 president Sultan al-Jaber are displayed at a bus stop outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany. Photo / AP
OPINION
This time next week in the United Arab Emirates, Cop28 will be under way for another two weeks of hot air, hyperbole, alarmist statements, false promises, “last-minute frantic negotiations” and a slew of assurances that will be met with relief, but which will ultimately turn out tobe falsehoods.
Of course, the reason we are having Cop28 is because Cops one through 27 weren’t able to address the issues at hand.
The chief issue at hand being the fact we are allegedly running our planet into the ground and nothing short of urgent and life-altering change is going to stop it.
Each year, there is the obvious irony of the many private jets that descend upon the host city - those carbon footprints, those fossil-fuelled miles seem somehow to be acceptable as long as the work done on the ground is seen to be for the right reasons.
Sort of like all the mining that will be required to obtain the many varied materials and specialist commodities necessary to produce the EVs that are so dearly needed to save the planet.
Being a bit of a car nut, you might want to start reading about EVs - I can tell you, things have hit troubled waters.
If ever there was a bandwagon governments and the media have jumped on, it’s EVs; talking endlessly about the huge growth in sales, while rarely mentioning the fact all sales come off an exceedingly small base, and are mainly driven by public subsidy.
We are about to find out here, when the current “feebate” scheme is brought to a halt, just how many people actually want to buy EVs as opposed to helping themselves to a discounted product subsidised by the state.
Watch the sales plummet.
Manufacturers all over the world, from the big American players to Volvo and Tesla, are involved in a combination of cutting back investment, cutting back production and cutting their prices.
COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber speaks during the World Government Summit in Dubai in February. Photo / AP
Part of it is China, and that’s a story all by itself.
The state backing of car manufacturers almost certainly violates a variety of international trading rules, and the Europeans are already on to it with investigations.
The upshot being there is a growing mountain of material to be consumed on why the future of EVs is not at all close to being as bright as the hype merchants would have you believe.
Which is why Rishi Sunak delayed the banning of combustion engines in Britain, and while he did that, he got stuck into handing out licences to look and drill for oil in the North Sea.
Like it or not, and Cop will not like it one bit, but the world needs oil, it uses oil, and its demise has been well and truly overstated.
Which is, of course, the other irony - the United Arab Emirates, the host of Cop28.
We try to save the world in one of the most oil-rich parts of the planet.
Should we not be slightly more exercised about that? If we were being genuine in our attempt to do more than merely talk each year?
Another irony is the ever-growing alarmist industry, as supported by the reports that get published in the lead-up to any given Cop.
Lines like “we are on the verge of being too late” and “it is now or never for the planet”. And given those sort of lines have been used for an embarrassingly long period of time and therefore have worn thin, we are now up to: “We have passed the point of no return.”
The stats on ice melting, the animals and their habitats affected, the poor countries who will suffer the most, and so it goes.
Of course, those “poor” countries still argue everyone else should pay the bill, perhaps the most enduring of the unresolved issues at Cops one through 27.
None of this is to suggest the climate isn’t in trouble, or that more action isn’t most certainly required.
But what Cop has never dealt with well is reality.
Our actions speak louder than any amount of hot air pumped out of any given conference room.
We are simply not up for it.
If you accept all the science (and that remains for many an issue all by itself), what is needed is beyond us.
It’s beyond the life of most governments; it’s certainly beyond the desire of most voters.
Domestically, the previous Labour Government gave addressing climate issues a decent crack, and got next to nowhere.
We didn’t meet targets, the farmers are ropeable and Labour is leaving behind a series of reports and broken promises - and they were “all-in” advocates.
If talk was action, we would have got somewhere. But I bet you whatever you want, at best, Cop28 will end in some emotive hyperbole, and at worst, nothing.
