Happy New Armageddon

We’ve got so few years left now

The wind may blaw, the cock may craw,

The rain may rain and the snaw may snaw,

But ye winna’ frichten Jock McGraw,

The stoutest man in the Forty-Twa’

Image: crop from the 1980 Scott’s Porage Oats cookbook, showing a stout Scotsman.

The wind is blowing and, up in Alba, there’s even snow. Rain there is a plenty, but, Forty-Twa’ or no, is Jock McGraw afeared of Gerrit’s terrible weather?

Pledges and statements are fine. But many are backtracking on the Paris commitment, and, Kyoto ... remember that?

Activist and journalist George Monbiot was a guest on the BBC’s Question Time whilst COP 28 was in the offing, during which he spoke these words (edited for clarity):

“Leave fossil fuels in the ground. It’s so simple. There have [at the time of that broadcast] been 27 COP meetings. Twenty-five of them have been total failures. Two of them have been partial successes, 1997 and 2015. Not a single final agreement from any of those meetings has said what needs to be done, which is to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and, unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground, we have absolutely no hope of preventing climate breakdown.

“[I]t’s a bit like going on a diet and saying, ‘OK, I did eat a gigantic tub of ice cream and an enormous cake, but I did eat a salad, so why aren’t I losing weight?’ [It] doesn’t matter how many wind turbines you put up. [It] doesn’t matter how many solar panels you put up. Unless you’re retiring fossil fuel infrastructure, unless you are legislating to leave coal, oil and gas where it belongs, which is in geological strata, you are going to cook the planet. It is as simple as that.

“… [T]he highly effective and lethal fossil fuel lobbying, which has been a bugbear of these conferences from the very beginning, from 1992, and has now got to such a ridiculous point that the president of COP 28 is in his day job the chief executive of the UAE oil and gas company Adnoc, which is currently expanding its oil production, … is what has thwarted the simple things that need to be done. And while we wait and wait, the years tick by, and we’ve got so few years left now.

“We’re going to have to take drastic action if we’re going to avoid what could well be Earth’s systems’ collapse. I mean: this is the most important predicament humanity has ever faced. And as a result of the enormous oppressive power of the fossil fuel industry, we’re flunking it.”

It’s like the difference between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause. They both involve not shooting your gun. But they say something different about what happens next.
Therefore, the commitment that emerged from COP 28—if that’s even what it is—to take action by 2050 will transmute into a sense that we have till 2050 to do anything. No one in the oil & gas industries has the slightest intention of achieving climate damage limitation by 2049.

Do you tell your kids they need to be in bed at 9 o’clock?
Or do you tell them they can play as much as they want until 9 o’clock?
And, whichever you tell them, are they ever in bed at 8.30?
We are dealing with children here.