Wealthy polluters weaken COP27 edict

COP stands for the Conference of Parties, which is a United Nations-organised project to bring the world’s countries together and find a global consensus on solving the problems of climate change.

The science shows us, and the world’s countries agree, we are heading towards a massive destruction of our civilisation unless we can stop burning coal, oil and gas and get our energy from greenhouse gas-free sources.

We have now had 27 meetings since the first in 1995, and are beginning to get some recognition that the problem is real and that it is cheaper to fix the problem than have to pay for the damage from the problems we are causing.

The problem is that the richer, CO producing countries, such as the US, Canada, Australia, Russia and the Middle Eastern countries, send teams of lawyers and politicians to defend the money these countries make from the sale of fossil fuel products, and these are also among the richer countries that donate money to the poorer countries that are going to suffer huge problems.

The COP27 meeting that has just concluded, managed to agree to provide a fund that would help the nations most likely to be affected by climate change and these would be, typically, the Pacific Island nations that are going to be flooded by sea level rise or the floods in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This is the first time the consequences of burning fossil fuels and producing CO2 has been recognised as a serious danger so that, despite my pessimism, the world’s countries have made a common agreement to acknowledge the problem and signed a declaration to do something.

COP27 had a massive participation by the oil and coal lobbyists, which is where the abundance of jet planes delivering executives came from, and it was reported their number exceeded those from the 10 smallest nations.

There are powerful forces at work and we were lucky that Joe Biden was the president of the

US, that Russia was disgraced by the Ukraine invasion and Australia has a new government.

This type of negotiation is a slow and painful business but the UN is the only way to get the 193 recognised countries in the world to work together for a common good.

The internet has made the world a more connected place and, despite the explosion in alternative facts, a science-based approach prevails.

The US pulled out under Donal Trump but the people of the US threw him out and a similar fate befell the liberal government of Australia.

Our form of democracy is not adopted by China but the government has to deliver benefits to the people or they will rise up, just as Mao did, and the results can be catastrophic to the leaders.

Killing citizens as Iran and Myanmar do to keep in power is not an option against 1.3 billion people so a form of democracy exists even in China.