Schmoozing for Climate Change

Scientists say that in order to keep global warming to no more than 1.5°C, as called for in the 2005 Paris Agreement, humanity’s global carbon emissions must be reduced 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050; otherwise, global warming will be irreversible. Yet after 28 Conference of Partners (COP) meetings to address Climate Change (where 70,000 – yes! – people from nations around the world gather to drink iced beverages) little has been accomplished.  

But that’s understandable. After all, humanity has been easily distracted by more immediate extinction threats. War comes to mind (e.g., see “Mideast War number 3,574,098,” currently in progress). 

And sadly, if COP accomplishments to date are any measure, irreversible Climate Change is as inevitable as another COP conference. 

So – why not plan to live happily on a dramatically warmer planet? Here are just a few “climate” questions COP should be considering:

• What new technologies, skills, etc., will be needed on Planet Sizzle? Perhaps vents on every sidewalk, blowing a cool breeze from the city’s central solar-powered refrigeration plant? Plastic ice cream that melts slowly? 
• Where should populations move to survive and stay cool? Will immigration laws exclude anybody? 
• What will replace melted highway asphalt?
• To minimize hot air, could AI replace the annual COP conference? Or maybe Congress?
• Will public nudity in Sonoma Valley be legal by 2030? If not, why not?
• (Your question here)
  

While trying, likely in vain, to halt the climate change tsunami, perhaps COP should surf these and other questions, gliding us past our self-inflicted Great Extinction to the sunny (but cool) beaches of Happiness and Prosperity.

To increase the likelihood that the effort succeeds – even by public relations measures – the next COP meeting should not be held in an oil-producing country, as was this year’s COP 28.  Dubai is one of the world’s leading (a/k/a notorious) oil producers whose royal family and capitalists (redundant) apparently have not yet gotten the message about the main driver of current climate change. 

Another pro-climate “look” for the next COP gathering would be not to “gather” for the meeting at all. Zoom, perhaps? 

Yep, this year, many if not most of those 70,000 Dubai attendees “Zoomed” to the meeting in carbon-spewing jet planes. Airplanes are certainly faster and more convenient than other alternatives (boat, car, camel), but each jet engine spews 3.16 kg of global-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) for each kilogram of fuel burned. That’s way more CO2 per kilo than any camel spews, even after a big lunch.  

Sadly again, 70,000 people jetting to a meeting in a major oil-producing country to talk about reducing carbon-caused climate change makes it harder to take COP seriously, especially given the lack of meaningful progress in reversing the climb of the world’s CO2 emissions. The backslapping in Dubai must have been something to behold.  

To be fair, however, your correspondent has absolutely no evidence that any person, firm, or country represented in Dubai made any money whatsoever from the millions of gallons/pounds of carbon-based fuel & munitions expended in the war to the north in Gaza, or in Ukraine.  

Still, even little wars spew more carbon than a planet full of camels.