Andy Burnham went to the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya for a global climate summit.
asserted
Burnham → go → summit
But if he’d hoped to fix up meetings with Donald Trump, Mark Carney, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni or even Japan’s Sanae Takaichi, he would have been disappointed.
asserted
he → hop → Trump
Burnham is the only G7 leader who thought it necessary to attend.
asserted
it → think → ?
As he twiddled his thumbs in Turkey, sipping sustainable soy lattes with his Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh and the 255 British officials who have made the trip with them, Mr Burnham might have noticed something else.
uncertain
Burnham → twiddle → something
COP31, the annual jamboree of the climatocracy officially known as ‘the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change’, has finally managed to unite both sides of the climate debate.
asserted
COP31 → know → debate
Andy Burnham delivered his speech at the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in Turkey on Thursday
Those who insist the climate is in ‘crisis’ also complain ever more loudly that 31 meetings, attended by a record 93,000 people this year, have had zero effect on slowing the relentless rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – up from 0.032 per cent to 0.042 per cent in 60 years.
asserted
meetings → deliver → years
They grumble that the meetings now seem to happen in coal-burning or forest-felling countries and feature swarms of corporate lobbyists striking lucrative fossil-fuel deals in the corridors.
asserted
meetings → grumble → corridors
Meanwhile, people who think the climate is not in crisis complain that 31 meetings attracting dozens of private jets (a record 93 this year) appear to have done nothing to change the weather, with storms, droughts and floods still showing no sign of getting either worse or better than they always were.
asserted
they → think → sign
They complain the meetings always seem to attract armies of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats and environmental campaigners more concerned with green-washing deals and hobnobbing with ‘sustainability’ tycoons than saving the planet.
asserted
meetings → complain → planet
Nothing of diplomatic significance is ever agreed at these meetings.
asserted
Nothing → agree → meetings
Even the Paris summit of 2015 – widely considered the most revolutionary of all the COPs – confined itself to suggesting governments make non-binding promises to reduce emissions, few of which they kept.
asserted
they → consider → which
So it is worth asking why these pow-wows persist.
asserted
wows → ask → ?
And why our PM thinks it made sense for him to be there, even briefly.
asserted
him → think → sense
Activists took part in a protest on the second day of the climate change conference in Turkey
We may never discover the answer to the second question but the answer to the first is that the COP meetings are an entirely self-sufficient enterprise in their own right, now largely cast adrift from any real-world issue.
uncertain
meetings → take → issue
The purpose of each meeting is to prepare for the next meeting.
asserted
purpose → prepare → meeting
The process, you might say, is the product.
uncertain
you → say → ?
Bureaucrats can devote entire careers to writing obscure papers for such events.
asserted
Bureaucrats → devote → events
Airlines can make millions flying delegates back and forth.
asserted
Airlines → make → delegates
And hotel chains can trouser massive windfalls from supplying them with room service and limo rides.
asserted
chains → trouser → service
The whole thing could be done on Zoom, of course, but that would spoil the fun.
uncertain
that → do → fun
The truth is that vested interests now keep the COP process afloat.
asserted
interests → keep → process
Suppose we wake up tomorrow and scientists tell us that – sorry! – they now think the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than they thought, or that they now think we can have a warmer world without more storms, droughts and floods.
asserted
we → suppose → storms
Ask yourself if such good news would be welcome in Antalya this week.
asserted
news → ask → Antalya
The politicians would hate losing climate change as a convenient excuse for their failed policies.
asserted
politicians → hate → policies
The officials, campaigners, capitalists and commentators attending the COP all have a massive stake in stressing the cloud in every silver lining.
asserted
officials → attend → lining
It is true that the looming El Nino – a climate pattern that involves weaker than normal trade winds in the Pacific pushing warm water back East towards the West coast of the Americas – has put a spring in the step of the climatecrats this year as droughts and floods begin to worsen on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Although one modelling study has suggested that El Ninos might be getting 10 per cent stronger as a result of man-made global warming, they were happening long before the warming began and the strongest one was in 1877.
uncertain
one → loom → 1877
Whatever the truth, it represents a golden opportunity to ramp up the alarm about bad weather.
asserted
it → represent → weather
Politically, too, the American midterm elections have emboldened the scaremongers, as they glimpse the end of the reign of the climate villain-in-chief, Donald Trump.
asserted
they → embolden → chief
That prophet of doom, former Secretary of State John Kerry (why the long face?), arrived in Turkey along with 19 Democrat congressmen and declared that the elections are a referendum on Trump’s climate policies.
asserted
elections → arrive → policies
The only problem with this argument is that, in the weeks running up to the Congressional elections, greens were complaining that the Democratic party’s leaders, donors and strategists were frantically telling candidates not to mention climate at all, lest it put voters off.
asserted
it → run → voters
They called this tactic ‘climate hushing’.
asserted
They → call → tactic
The candidates did indeed hush themselves.
asserted
candidates → hush → themselves
As the energy commentator Michael Shellenberger reports, the share of House and Senate Democrats’ Press releases that mentioned climate change has plummeted from 28 per cent in 2021 to just 2 per cent in 2026.
asserted
that → report → 2026
All over the world people are alarmed about the high cost of energy and the threat to reliable energy supplies presented by the wars in Ukraine and Iran.
asserted
people → present → Ukraine
By contrast, the possible future effect of emissions on the weather has dropped far down the list of voters’ concerns.
asserted
effect → drop → concerns
When asked to pay yet more taxes and bungs to the crony capitalists of renewable energy and electric cars, they baulk.
asserted
they → ask → energy
Three decades ago, when the COP summits got under way, it was reasonable to hope that decarbonisation might prove to be easy and cheap as well as urgent.
uncertain
decarbonisation → get → way
Now we know better.
asserted
we → know → ?
Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a project set up to identify the greatest challenges facing the world and how to solve them, has launched a new website – netzerocostbenefit.com – based on the temperature models and economic models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
asserted
Lomborg → set → Change
You can enter the name of your country and find out how much benefit you can expect to get from the climate policies being pursued by your government and at what cost.
asserted
you → enter → government
…and 7 more, not listed.
The Aporia
