Up to 100,000 people — most of whom derive their professional status and income from climate-related politics, advocacy and business — flew into Dubai for the COP28 annual global climate policy-making event, the Conference of the Parties under the United Nations’ climate convention. And the result?
An unmitigated disaster. Indigenous people, frontline communities and climate justice groups rebuked the deal as unfair, inequitable and “business as usual”. At the final session, a weak and incoherent compromise resolution between petrostates and smaller states and advocates — which did not call for the phase-out of fossil fuels — was accepted without dissent and greeted with a self-congratulatory standing ovation, even as Pacific and small island delegates were barred by security from entering the room.
Too many glib responses were variations on the “moving in the right direction, but more needs to be done” mash, with “flawed but still transformative” one classic example. Within two days the COP28 president, who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil company, announced the United Arab Emirates would keep up its record investment in new oil production.
Prof. Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester described the scene as “the infinite loop of the COP GroundHog days”. It seemed a form of Stockholm Syndrome again took hold with cooped-up delegates — for decades held hostage to the denial-and-delay tactics of the fossil-fuel producers and the threat of veto from their captured governments — cheering an outcome which will push societies everywhere closer to civilisational breakdown.
Such cognitive dissonance is the COPs’ cultural norm. It is all about a performative outcome regardless of efficacy. Despite dozens of such “successes” over three decades, global emissions are still rising. The politics is about incrementalism, compromises, deals and “pragmatic realism” which assume that one can negotiate with the........