A COLD SHOULDER TO THE HOT AIR SUMMIT SHOULDER TO
Humanity’s last chance to save the planet — so say the green messiahs of Cop26. But days before world leaders jet into Glasgow, why ARE so many Scots sceptical (and angry) enough to say they’ll give...
IN the countdown to the crunch environmental talks tabled for Cop26, the corridors of power have gushed with superlatives from the great and the good. John Kerry, America’s climate change envoy, calls the summit in prospect our ‘greatest test of global citizenship’. He names Glasgow as the ‘last best hope for the world to get its act together’.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson opines the gathering of heads of state from around the world must be a ‘turning point for humanity’.
‘This is a last chance saloon, literally,’ chips in the Prince of Wales. Naturalist Sir David Attenborough, perhaps the most trusted voice of the lot, insists ‘there could not be a more important moment’ for international agreement on climate change.
Roll the apocalyptic scene setters into one and we have something nearing VIP consensus that Glasgow is to host perhaps the most pivotal meeting in the history of our species.
High stakes negotiations? Understatement of the century.
Do the stakes get any higher than the planet on which we live, the air we breathe, the very stuff of mankind’s continued existence?
Yes, when the world leaders commune in just a week’s time behind a ring of steel – protected by the most fearsome contingent of armed police ever seen on these shores – Glasgow will be the centre of the political world. The city will be the backdrop to the quest for an agreement of unparalleled profundity, a global reverseferret on our highway to extinction.
That, so the summit’s most eloquent spinners tell us, is what Cop26 is all about. Why, then, is it leaving so many Scots cold? For all the grandiose words of some of Earth’s most effective communicators on the future of planet itself, there is, in Glasgow, an almost eerie lack of involvement with the Cop26 summit and its bold rescue mission.
Where there is engagement with the reality of up to 30,000 delegates descending on the city – along with the Queen, US President Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, scores of government heads and squadrons of protesters – it centres more on the impending short-term disruption than the impending doom the talks purport to avert.
SOMEWHERE along the line, it seems, the city inured itself to the direful soundbites and focused only on the news which directly affected their day-to-day lives in the autumn of 2021.
What does ‘Cop’ even mean, many absently wonder, and the answer – Conference of the Parties – does little to inspire further inquiry. And 26? You mean there have been 25 such Cops already and the world still needs saving? That is indeed the position.
But these quibbles are only the tip of the iceberg in what can be seen as a national torpor on the issue of environmental catastrophe and the supposed do-or-die talks to avert it.
To take the temperature on the streets of Edinburgh, Inverness or Stirling is to behold the abjectness of the summit’s failure to capture the public imagination.
‘I haven’t heard about this conference,’ says David Blythe, 92, from Edinburgh. ‘What was it called again?’ The crime around his home in Leith Walk is ‘very bad’, he remarks. ‘I wish they’d focus on that.’
Perhaps a younger voice, student Cameron Black, 21, will offer more engagement with the summit’s global emergency agenda.
‘I don’t know much, but it sounds positive,’ he says, vaguely. ‘I’ve not really seen much of it. If I have, I haven’t taken much notice.’
In Inverness, solicitor Patrick O’Dea questions the wisdom of holding Cop26 at all due to the pandemic. The entire event could have been more safely and cheaply expedited online, he argues.
Support worker Maureen Chapple, 65, meanwhile, applauds the intent but adds: ‘The sceptic in me says the danger is it will just be another talking shop with inevitable disagreements between the richest nations delaying progress when a deadline is rapidly approaching.’
A nation’s public on the edge of their seats, fingers and toes crossed for the consensus that might deliver humanity from ruin? Hardly. The truth is many hardly know the summit is happening.
It is a different story in Glasgow, of course, where some of the busiest streets in the heart of the city will be sealed off, the remaining ones gridlocked or blocked by protest group lie-ins.
Here movement even by foot or bicycle will be restricted and daily commutes further frustrated by an expected ScotRail strike lasting for the entirety of the conference.
Taxi drivers? There is already a nationwide shortage and anecdotal evidence suggests many in Glasgow envisage taking the next couple of weeks off to spare themselves the hassle of a city brought to a standstill.
How will 30,000 extra commuters get to their planetsaving talks? No one seems to know.
Adding to the obstacle course, a high-security fence was thrown up this week around the SEC campus and surrounding area to provide an extra layer of protection to the so-called Blue Zone, where world leaders will convene. The security arrangements, mindboggling in their complexity and scope, unleash new superlatives on an event groaning under the weight of its own momentousness.
It is the biggest policing operation in the history of our nation, so vast that thousands of officers from forces around the UK are being drafted in, many armed with Glock pistols and semi-automatic weapons, to assist in the keeping the peace.
In all, up to 10,000 officers a day will be deployed. They will have to get from A to B too.
Not that the city is any stranger to international setpieces on a scale comparable to Cop26.
Seven years ago, Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games which are remembered by most in the city as an
unqualified success. An army of 15,000 volunteers – known as Clydesiders – was recruited to shepherd the vast flocks of visitors. For a nation then on referendum footing, the games served as a joyous breath of fresh air for Scotland’s largest city before the crescendo of political hostilities resumed.
ARENAS and stadiums were packed. Hotel prices were off the scale. Then, as now, the SEC campus was a high-security area with knock-on effects for commuters who found that many roads were designated ‘Games traffic only’.
Yet Glasgow wholeheartedly embraced the event. These were our games. The Cop26 summit? The attitude around the city is these are their talks.
Allison Carrick, 54, from Finnieston
on the doorstep of the Cop26 site, said: ‘I think it’s a load of nonsense.’
The disruptions will be ‘absolutely disastrous’, she believes – and heighten the Covid risk in the city. If it were up to her the whole event would be cancelled.
As for the discussions themselves, she doubts they will have any impact on the public.
That is in stark contrast to the massive hikes in energy bills being felt by everyone. Her electricity has gone up by £35 a month.
Another member of the Greater Glasgow public, Alistair Hackston, 75, from Hamilton, on the prospects of Cop26 being an environmental watershed: ‘Not gonna happen,’ he says.
The former town planning consultant adds: ‘It’s a lot of promises and aspirations without a timescale.
‘Renewables and fuel replacements will not become operational for some time yet. And this nonsense about doing away with gas boilers is total gibberish.
‘There’s no enthusiasm from the public because there’s been no information about it for people to get a grip of and say let’s go ahead and do this.’
Comparing the disengagement – resentment even – of people on the ground to the breathless anticipation of those flying in finds government leaders and the public they serve on very different pages. Only now, with barely a week to go, are our political masters waking up to that reality.
Cop26 president Alok Sharma is said to be angry at Mr Johnson for ‘ramping up’ hopes of a significant policy breakthrough at the summit when the realpolitik makes the chances of that slim.
Fears are rising that, far from saving the world, the event will be a massive flop.
Indeed, many in the host city believe it is already just that. The reasons are multiple and, in many cases, predictable.
At the core of the event’s failure to set the heather alight lies the fact this is a Westminster Government show strategically staged in Scotland to highlight the strength of the Union to the watching world. The SNP Government has no interest in such an endeavour.
It prefers to present a fractured Union. From the outset, then, the optics of Cop26 have created tensions.
If there is a sense of disengagement with the summit, it begins at the heart of our devolved government with ambivalence for an event on its home soil which it is not running.
Our First Minister Nicola Sturgeon? A mere bit-part player in these weighty proceedings.
If credit is to be accorded for an unlikely breakthrough, Mr Johnson will surely bag it. If blame is to be apportioned for a gargantuan flop, let him bag that too. Westminster’s gig, nothing to do with us – we can hear the spin already.
But it is not just Holyrood intransigence which hampers Cop26. It is Westminster complacency.
Where was the charm offensive for the summit?
Where were the advertising hoardings, the online publicity campaigns, the government studies revealing the scale of the economic benefits for Glasgow in hosting such an enormous event?
Where the Commonwealth Games landed fully formed as a festival for all, Cop26 has contrived to exclude almost all who do not fall into the demographics of world leader or eco-zealot.
HOW ironic that a summit with a mission as far-reaching as rescuing humanity should succeed in reaching out to so few of us.
The Blue Zone, for the duration of the summit a UN enclave where even our own police are not allowed to operate without invitation, is a no-go area for all but official delegates.
The Green Zone on the opposite bank of the River Clyde is a public exhibition space for businesses and stakeholders to showcase green innovations.
As far as opportunities to engage with Cop26 are concerned, that is your lot. There are, however, multiple opportunities for Cop26 and its attendant sideshows to engage with us – in a manner many will not appreciate.
On a Global Day of Action on November 6, some 100,000 environmental protesters are expected to descend on Kelvingrove Park and march through the city centre to Glasgow Green. Detailed plans for ensuring their voices are heard remain to be seen.
What we do know is Extinction Rebellion will use ‘creative protests and non-violent civil disobedience’ to make its demands.
Another radical group, Insulate Britain, has waged an intensive campaign of road blocking in England in recent weeks, prompting motorists to leave their vehicles and drag the protesters out of their path. Similar tactics are inevitable in Glasgow.
Chains and glue will be deployed in the effort to maximise the challenge for police in removing them from their disruption site.
And these are the ‘peaceful’ protesters. Will Cop26 act as a giant honeypot for still more radical factions? Police Scotland is understood to be working on that assumption.
Numerous businesses are closing for the duration. A slew of major tourism attractions, including the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, are shutting up shop. And some firms have recently discovered to their dismay their insurance does not extend to summits of world leaders on their doorstep. They need terrorism cover.
It is not, then, mere shouldershrugging indifference which attends the climate gathering but, increasingly, outright hostility.
This week the irritation was exacerbated by news Glasgow refuse collectors plan to join ScotRail staff in striking during Cop26, maximising embarrassment for their paymasters – and letting rubbish pile high when the eyes of the world are on the city.
It is, perhaps, the final insult in a shambolic saga – an environmental summit staged in a city that does not want it amidst the whiff of uncollected waste.
In view of all of the above, saving the world could prove tricky.
Cop27 is next year in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. It may well have to wait until then.