Mike Parker, Chairman of SeSaME, writes…
Cop this then. Has Glasgow been fair? Or like a night of darkness? Imagine intruders revealed outside a climate bank, wrecking bars in hand. You might well expect a potential vandal caught thus to admit to a fair cop. Even if the restraining hand on their shoulder was a young teenager’s, wishing to uphold the scientific laws of nature. The downside a brusque dismissal and a frustrated youngster fighting despair at such adult irresponsibility. Their restraint pushed aside whilst their future way of life is casually trashed.
Actually my imagined climate bank stands for a vandalised world in the care of older leaders. Supposedly wise men who should know better, having known the science for decades. After avoiding a fair Cop 26 times it cannot simply be ignorance. It can only be a selfish exercising of twisted financial wisdom, supported by the interests of powerful fossil fuel investors and some owners of supportive media
Worst of all, you and I have been hosts of this 26th Cop, bewildered citizens wonderingly hearing a fanfare of triumphant trumpet calls, exhorting other countries, mere mortals, to step up to the mark, follow our country’s world beating credentials of carbon reduction promises.
Yet all the while that wrecking bar is still to hand, marked, “made in the UK.” We are still open to recklessly looking for coal in Cumbria: irresponsibly drilling for oil in the sea; building energy wasting houses; still installing polluting liquid petroleum gas as rural new-build heating systems in 2021.
Our unmasked spokesmen offer sound-bites masking our own climate neglect, whilst demanding failing countries follow our ambitious goals. They boast how splendidly we care, whilst quietly declining to join an international alliance aimed at ending new oil and gas projects. We are also seemingly unable to put the kibosh on a new oil field in the North Sea.
So it’s Cop 26 out with a whimper. Business as usual, with the odd teaser of some new promises. The fossil fuel king still wearing his crown, though slightly askew, deftly fending off the chilly hand of ineffective policing. A rogue Cop then!
