chronicle of a climate dystopia

It’s been a week since Sharm el Sheikh, the city of a thousand pools in the desert, has become the epicenter of key negotiations for the future of the planet. It is here where heads of state, ministers and diplomats from all over the world have gathered to discuss measures to stop the advance of the climate crisis, mitigate its impact and adapt to its consequences. The vast majority of these talks take place behind closed doors, in technical working groups and under the sole supervision of just a handful of international observers. But beyond what happens in those rooms, the result of which we will know from next Friday, there are many who point out that this year’s climate summit looks more like a climate dystopia.

This Sunday, for example, a dinosaur has appeared in Sharm el-Sheikh. His name is Frankie and he is the spokesperson for a project to raise awareness of the risks of the climate crisis. The animal (halfway between a velociraptor, a tyrannosaurus and a hollywood genetic aberration) has taken the floor to warn about the need to apply more drastic measures to deal with the environmental emergency. The dinosaur has explained, convincingly, that his Jurassic congeners had no chance of saving themselves from the impact of the meteorite, but that humanity still has time to avoid the ecological catastrophe. “Don’t choose extinction“, Frankie has cried before a crowd gathered to hear his words.

Frankie has not been the only dinosaur that has been seen this Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh. At the southern end of the metropolis, right at the end of one of the huge asphalt lines that connect one of the many tourist arteries of the city with the coast, a rustic specimen of diplodocus it also exhibited its long neck among the palm trees. In this case, the animal is one of the attractions of the tourist resorts in the area. In his habitat he is accompanied by a Shrek of dubious origin, a Santa Claus pulling his reindeer at almost 30 degrees in the shade and a sea ​​of ​​plastic sun loungers and parasols.

Only in the resort where this diplodocus is staying there are more than twenty swimming pools, several water slides and endless fountains and attractions more typical of an aquapark than an enclave in the middle of the desert. The picture, in fact, seems almost like a mirage in a continent where drought reaches extreme levels. That yes, not to dissociate too much from reality in the toilets of the enclosure there are posters that remind tourists of the importance of “turn off the tap so as not to waste water“. It is not going to be that the sight of dozens of artificial ponds makes us forget that, as the climate crisis progresses, water runs the risk of becoming a scarce resource.

asphalt city

The habitat of these dinosaurs it seems from another era. And it is that the Sharm el-Sheikh city model It is far from the ideals of cities designed to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis. Just as the world discusses the virtues of Barcelona’s superblocks or the fifteen-minute city of Paris, the Egyptian metropolis represents the opposite paradigm. The town rises like a tourist resort in the desert in which the old urban centers are connected, which now look like impoverished places, with the infrastructures and luxury hotels created for tourists. Except for the posters announcing the celebration of the climate summit, nothing seems to indicate that the Egyptian metropolis is adapting to the climatic reality.

Sharm el-Sheikh, in fact, is one of those cities created to go by car. Moving from one point to another without resorting to a vehicle on wheels is very complicated. The streets are just infinite lines of asphalt. In many cases, without there aren’t even sidewalks or pedestrian pathways to accompany the possible path of a pedestrian. There are also no zebra crossings. Nor any type of shade that appeases the almost 30 degrees that marks the thermometer in mid-November. Being a city that extends in a forced way along the coast, the distances are almost incomprehensible. In fact, to get around the town that is currently trying to spell the end of fossil fuels is almost mandatory to pull gasoline.

A ‘every man for himself’

Dinosaurs aren’t the only beings roaming Sharm el-Sheikh this week. These days, on the occasion of the summit, the Egyptian city welcomes crowd diplomats, scientists, activists and journalists, as well as other specimens of different origin that have traveled from all corners of the world to appear in this event. According to the first reports of the organization, the meeting will host almost 34,000 people. In the first few days alone, it is estimated that the city’s airport has received thousands of flights and more than 400 private jets loaded with attendees at the debate on the future of the planet choked by greenhouse gas emissions.

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The first week of the summit, as reported by the first attendees to the event, has been more convulsive than usual. During the first days, for example, the restaurants and supermarkets of the venue that hosts the convention sold out their reservations ahead of time. There was no food or water for everyone.. And as of mid-afternoon, he was a every man for himself. “It has been almost like a simulation of what it would be like to live on a rapidly warming planet where resources are scarce,” writes the chronicler Ed Kingone of the informative references of the climate summits.

After the first seven days of negotiations, Sharm el-Sheikh faces the final week of this debate. The final stretch of some key conversations for the future of the planet. Over the next few days, the Egyptian city will try to reach an agreement on issues such as how to speed up greenhouse gas cuts or who should pay the bill for the loss and damage already caused by the climate crisis in the most impoverished countries. of the globe. All these discussions, which could mark a before and after in the fight against the climate crisis, only have a week to complete into a real thing. And they must do it in a city that, today, shows all the faces of a climatic dystopia.