Following climate summits is a risky sport; the threat of falling a pit of despair It is true and tangible. COP28, taking place in Dubai, is no exception.
A few days after its start we have found out how The United Arab Emirates intended to use the conference about the climate close oil agreements with other countries; It’s hard to think of a more discouraging cover letter than this, although it wasn’t a surprise either. Even so, there are those who fervently advocate against giving up on the summit and what can be agreed upon, arguing that, if we accept defeat in advance, The bad guys – the oil companies, the fossil lobbies, the retardists and the deniers – will have won. They are not without reason. If we give up, what do we have left? Although the history of the COP, which begins in 1995, runs parallel to that of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions (also due to the increase in its concentration in the atmosphere and planetary warming), they are the best tool we have today. There is no real alternative to multilateralism, and those proposed now are variants of a very dangerous and deeply unfair “every man for himself”, which only the Global North can play. It is not the way.
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Like every year, furthermore, the climate summit carries the burden of a symbolism that is almost irrelevant numerically but transcendental on the emotional and psychological side. See how tens of thousands of people take planes (some private) to Going to a conference in the middle of a petrostate is something that incites neither optimism nor hope. However, the emissions derived from these summits are a very small and infinitesimal part of the annual total. The problem is not these tons of carbon dioxide that will be released into the atmosphere in the coming days from the airports and Dubai, but that they are not useful for change the course of planetary catastrophe that the UN, activists from around the world and all the scientific evidence periodically remind us. That is when they have no possible justification.
This COP will not crystallize into a new Paris Agreement, as some wish or dare to predict. It is very possible that the time of the summits that mark before and one after has already passed; Social, scientific and political credit will have to be earned again slowly. We do not have to expect any drastic break with the inertia of a sclerotic and partially fossilized multilateralism, but we will have to continue demanding that the future not be renounced, that we push wherever we can. Let’s protect ourselves against disappointment to guarantee the ability to continue working. Let’s get rid of the blindfolds, but also the impulse to sink the ship ourselves. And, like every year, we remember that Global warming neither begins nor ends with the COPs: After the conclusion there will be the same work to do, or perhaps even more. Folding our arms is a luxury that we cannot afford.