Great! Next Year's Climate Conference Will Be Hosted By Azerbaijan - Like The UAE, But w/o The Need To Pretend To Care

[hatrack]

The decision to make Azerbaijan – a repressive country whose economy depends heavily on fossil fuels – the host of Cop29 has not proven popular. Svitlana Romanko, an environmental lawyer and founder of Ukrainian campaign group Razom, which calls for a full embargo of Russian fossil fuels, said: “We are not surprised at all that oil dictatorships have created a bloody trade union trying to sustain their fossil fuel regimes… We are upset how the democratic leaders and UN institutions let them do so.”

“Azerbaijan is a small scale Russia,” she added, pointing to the former’s war against Armenia and gas trade with Russia’s Gazprom. Christian Kroll, CEO of green search engine Ecosia, said: “Yet another authoritarian, undemocratic oil state running Cop. We’ve seen over the last few years total devaluation of this climate conference and with it the UN’s role as a meaningful arbiter when it comes to abating the worst consequences of the climate crisis.”

The announcement comes after months of tensions over which country in the UN’s Eastern Europe grouping would host the conference. Russia had blocked any EU countries’ bids and many of the other contenders lacked infrastructure and funds to host such a large event.

“It is good that the uncertainty over who will host Cop29 is over,” said Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president of the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions. “It means that plans can now be made coming out of Cop28 for the key years of 2024 and 2025 – when new climate targets have to be tabled by all countries.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2023/dec/09/cop-28-global-heating-could-hit-3c-warn-politicians-as-climate-summit-continues

[orthoclad]

1. COPOUT29

The oil barons have bought it.

[Think. Again.]

2. It's over.

...allowing fossil fuel economies to have ANY input in climate discussions, let alone leading those discussions, is straight-out suicide.

[orthoclad]

3. We still have a moral obligation

to the billions of poor people of the world who had little to do with causing the climate crisis. I keep thinking of Bangladesh, caught between glacial melt floods from the Himalayas and sea level rise in their flat river deltas.

The chances keep getting smaller, and it's tempting to give up and ride out our last decades in as much comfort as we can achieve, but we must still make an effort. Every bit we can do to slow down the rate of change will save innocent lives - and innocent species.

[Think. Again.]

4. I'm not so sure it will...

...save innocent lives or species if we don't achieve a certain level of progress, in a certain amount of time.

We are nowhere near where we need to be and we seem to be slowing down more and more each day.

Sorry for the pessimism but I'm beginning to lose hope.

[orthoclad]

5. I agree. Hope is scarce.

But time is the key factor. Besides the measurement of 1.5C or 1.8C targets, there is the amount of time before we hit those numbers. Slowing the rate of change will give people time to adapt or move, and will give people time to move plant species to higher latitudes (that has begun), and give animal species time to change migration patterns or move to cooler climes.

[Think. Again.]

6. No. No no no...

...the ecological changes that about to start snowballing and cascading will not be held back unless we make major changes to our activities VERY soon.

This is not something that we pretend we can do on our chosen timeline.

[orthoclad]

7. I think you miss my meaning

I try to think of despair as a a first-world luxury, even if it's justified.

The changes are in process. If we stop emitting carbon right now, it will take years for things already in the process to turn around. There are many positive feedback loops like wildfires and methane clathrate emission that will continue and make things worse. Meanwhile, the global and national organs which could make quick and drastic change happen have been co-opted by petrobarons.

It looks to me like the only way we will make the drastic changes necessary to reverse the process will now be through catastrophe. Worldwide climate revolution is VERY unlikely. Using the pandemic as a model, we see that catastrophe can slow emissions, but that instance was temporary and quickly reversed when the first-world petroeconomy came booming back.

In the meantime, every ton of carbon we save will slow hitting 2C by some small amount, and buy time for some coastal Bangladeshis to find higher ground, or for some low-latitude plant ecosystems to find a new home. Despair is not a good reason to give up and accelerate the rate of change.

We missed the boat in the 1970s. Following the artificial OPEC "energy crisis", Jimmy Carter tried to change the paradigm by putting solar cells on the White House. The (heh) deep state (aka Wall Street) immediately struck back and Reagan took them down. That was the turning point that ultimately doomed billions to misery and death. We've delayed for too long.

[Think. Again.]

8. So, We do agree.