Sum­mits, which typ­i­cal­ly have more to do with words than actions, are habit­u­al­ly known by their acronym, which leaves the field wide open for re-inter­pre­ta­tion. I there­fore sug­gest that in the case of the major play­ers in COP27, the “P” — which stands for “Par­ties” — be replaced with the plur­al of an archa­ic Eng­lish epi­thet: “poltroon”.

One of its con­no­ta­tions is “craven”. To see why the sobri­quet fits, you only have to read past the head­lines tout­ing COP 27’s one “suc­cess”, an agree­ment to form a com­mit­tee of 24 coun­tries to work out how, and how, much the major pol­luters should con­tribute to a fund to help those most affect­ed by cli­mate change.
It will amount to tril­lions of dol­lars, which nat­u­ral­ly brought out gasps of horror.
A not­ed New York Times colum­nist opined that: “It is sim­ply incom­pre­hen­si­ble that vot­ers in the world’s devel­oped coun­tries will be will­ing to trans­fer that amount of mon­ey from them­selves to the world’s poor­est coun­tries. Such gen­eros­i­ty flies in the face of every­thing that demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions over the past cen­tu­ry have taught us about vot­er behavior.”
He has a point. In my embar­rass­ment of rich­es when it comes to wit­ness­ing human suf­fer­ing, I’ve found that help­ing alle­vi­ate it comes a dis­tant sec­ond when placed next to self-inter­est.
Ergo, how about posit­ing the fund as a clar­i­on call to war.
After all:
The Viet­nam War cost the equiv­a­lent of about $1 TRILLION in the cur­rent dol­lar val­ue, and the Unit­ed States is still pay­ing “$22 bil­lion per year in war com­pen­sa­tions to Viet­nam vet­er­ans and their families.”
As of 2020 the war in Iraq had cost the U.S. an esti­mat­ed two TRILLION dollars.
The bill for the war in Afghanistan was $300 mil­lion dol­lars per day, every day, for two decades. Do the math and you get — TRILLIONS.
And those tril­lions were for wars the U.S. and its allies LOST, a result no one can afford when it comes to cli­mate change.
A par­tial list of ambi­tions from last year’s COP 26 sum­mit that were stymied in order to get this year’s “deal” includes:
NO com­mit­ment to emis­sions peak­ing before 2025, which the sci­ence insists is necessary.
NO clear fol­low-through on the phase down of coal.
NO clear com­mit­ment to phase out all fos­sil fuels.
How­ev­er, based on the argu­ment that gas pro­duces less emis­sions than coal, the text of this year’s “accom­plish­ment” does include a ref­er­ence to “low emis­sion and renew­able ener­gy”, a “sig­nif­i­cant loop­hole” for the devel­op­ment of fur­ther gas resources.
Thus did the sum­mit wrap up after “…a con­fus­ing and often chaot­ic 48 hours left del­e­gates exhausted.”
Appar­ent­ly, lack of easy access to food and water slowed down progress. One long-time del­e­gate told a reporter: “I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any­thing like this in 25 years.”  Poor soul. That puts you in the com­pa­ny of mil­lions. Not only that, par­tic­i­pants had to make do with exces­sive air con­di­tion­ing. As far as I can dis­cern, no men­tion was made of how much that con­tributed to the prob­lem under discussion.

                                     ON THE PLUS SIDE

But at least the major par­tic­i­pants weren’t sub­ject to annoy­ing nois­es from groups demand­ing more con­crete action. Pro­tes­tors and civ­il soci­ety activists, jus­ti­fi­ably con­sid­ered the “moral com­pass­es” of COP and oth­er such gath­er­ings, were kept well away from the main venue, cour­tesy of host coun­try Egypt’s abhor­rence of any­thing remote­ly resem­bling protests, or any expres­sions oth­er than offi­cial opin­ion come to that.
Mean­while, behind closed doors… “diplo­mats from Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er oil- and gas-pro­duc­ing coun­tries pushed back against lan­guage that called for a phase­out of all pol­lut­ing fos­sil fuels…”
For com­pa­ny they had what an analy­sis by the advo­ca­cy group Glob­al Wit­ness found to be “a record num­ber of fos­sil fuel lob­by­ists among atten­dees at this year’s meet­ing.” One report put them at more than 600.

                               ALTERNATE VENUES?

How about set­ting COP 28 some­place that would give del­e­gates a sam­ple of what they’re sup­posed to be curb­ing? Maybe huts in a refugee camp in the Horn of Africa, where two years of unre­lent­ing drought, which sci­en­tists say is exac­er­bat­ed by cli­mate change, have put 21 mil­lion peo­ple in dire risk of famine?

Soma­lia is described as being “on the brink of cat­a­stro­phe”. Accord­ing to the World Bank, in 2019 it pro­duced 690 kilo­tons of car­bon emis­sions — 1/7,000th as much as the Unit­ed States, which spewed out 4.8 mil­lion kilo­tons. Hard­ly a fair trade.
Or they could meet in rur­al Pak­istan, where floods made worse by glob­al warm­ing inun­dat­ed one third of the coun­try, killed more than 1,500 peo­ple and caused $30-bil­lion worth of damage.
Pak­istan con­tributes less than 1 per­cent of the world’s plan­et-warm­ing emissions.
But no. COP 28 is going to be in Abu Dhabi. 
If 27 is any­thing to go by, I sug­gest look­ing up poltroon’s archa­ic bed­fel­lows, “cad” and “bound­er” in prepa­ra­tion for 28.

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