Hot on climate talk but Covid was a Cop out
If the Cop26 climate summit was a film, it would be a Hammer horror.
Smooth Peter Cushing plays double-breasted Prince Charles, and Vincent Price is Boris Johnson, hissing “coal, cars, trees”.
US President Joe Biden is reprised by Henry Fonda, after he stumbles on set while filming On Golden Pond next door.
Burt Kwouk auditioned for Xi Jinping, but the Chinese leader was written out of the script. And Meryl Streep stars as the Queen, in a cameo appearance on Zoom, pleading with politicians to rise above politics and become statesmen.
There are other comic touches. United Nations staff refer to Alok Sharma, Tory president of the event, as “His Excellency”. Ahahahahaha!
The movie is shot in a dystopian inner city, where rats as big as hyenas roam the streets, looking for striking dustmen to bite. Twenty-five thousand zombies are herded inside a ring of steel, shouting into their iPhones.
The dialogue is apocalyptic. Johnson warns we’re all doomed if we don’t do as he says. The UN Secretary General says we’re all digging our own graves.
His Excellency Sharma bleats “red lights are flashing”.
TV beams endless coverage, highlighting a $18billion deal to stop deforestation by 2030. Eco-ghostbusters first saw this apparition seven years ago, and denounce it as too little, too late.
All we can do is sit back and try to comprehend the cataclysm that evidently awaits. But the movie makers insist we sit on the edge of our seats, gripped with terror. Meanwhile, a real, immediate threat to human existence – Covid-19 – stalks the globe. In only 20 months it has afflicted 247,574,342 people and claimed 5,013,591 lives – 141,181 of those are in the UK, and our death toll has risen to 163 every single day.
Yet so-called world leaders refuse to hand over millions of unneeded vax jabs to underdeveloped nations, where they might halt the inexorable march of the disease.
But you don’t hear much about that at Cop26, where pledges are more numerous than a pawn shop. How many will be redeemed?
Vincent Price can play Boris, hissing ‘coal, cars, trees’