Riding the Winds of Climate Chaos for Power and Profit
The COP 27 climate change summit, sponsored this year by the Coca-Cola corporation, is being held in a resort town within a police state that is difficult to reach except by air, or on a road bordering with Israel. There are many security checkpoints where authorities will check mobile phones and laptops to inspect email and social network postings.
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt is a tightly controlled, heavily guarded venue where civil demonstrations and protests will not be allowed nor tolerated.
The war in Ukraine has reversed the already insignificant and insufficient promises of COP 26, and the cry is on to increase coal and gas production.
Every year brings a new excuse for doing nothing, and COP 27 is already a failure before it has even begun.
Subsidies for fossil fuel production have increased and will continue to increase. The global fear of energy shortages has terrified world leaders and the last thing they are now concerned with is addressing the current climate chaos situation.
Even King Charles III was ordered by the British government to not attend COP 27 for fear that his advocacy for environmentalism might incite unwanted activism.
In the United States, the concern over the price of gas trumps all other concerns, especially environmental concerns.
In a world of billions addicted to hydrocarbon drugs, the last thing the addicts want to hear is any talk of cutting the supply. They need to shove that nozzle into their insatiable tanks and they need to do it as cheaply as possible.
Once again, it’s rich nations not wanting to fund poorer nations and poorer nations demanding their right to develop fossil fuels resources for themselves.
“Rich nations have exploited and reaped the economic benefits of fossil fuels for decades,” says Gabriel Obiang Lima, Equatorial Guinea’s oil minister, describing calls on Africa to hold back on using hydrocarbons as simply unfair. “Now is our time to develop and monetize our resources, and developed countries should understand.”
Some 35,000 delegates are expected to attend COP 27 in a nation where some 75,000 political prisoners are incarcerated. Why is a United Nations conference being held in a nation notorious for brutally vicious human right’s violations?
The Egyptian government is vetting NGO participation. Safe issues will be prominent, such as recycling, cleaning plastic from beaches, and advocating for solar, nuclear and wind energy alternatives. There will be talk — but no action — about cutting fossil fuel production or about ocean mining, or the contribution of industrialized fishing and meat production of greenhouse gas emissions, and the destruction of species and ecosystems that sequester CO2 emissions.
COP 27 will be an exercise in greenwashing that will set the agenda for future COP gabfests. It will be quiet, orderly, controlled and politely enforced. And like previous “COP Out” conferences, it will accomplish absolutely nothing that will make this planet a safer place to live.
It will be like watching firemen throwing buckets of gasoline on the flames as they pretend to be concerned about extinguishing the industrial inferno that they profit from.
These COP conferences are nothing more than a prized promotion opportunity for the host nations. Delegates are expected to turn a blind eye to the ecological and human rights atrocities in the very place they are meeting.
World leaders need to spend just enough time there to get their photo ops — many smiling and posing with young people, with encouraging lies about how they are making a difference just by their attendance.
Egypt had the gall to say young people attending the conference will be speaking “truth to power” while thousands of young people are being tortured and incarcerated for doing just that. The way to diffuse the meaning of speaking truth to power is to incorporate the slogan into the official propaganda.
In Egypt there are children suffering in Egyptian prisons for speaking truth to power.
As the blah, blah, blah and bullshit COP Out circus revs up, pipeline construction is forging ahead — from the Tanzanian Ugandan Eacop partnership to the forced invasion of First Nation lands in British Columbia, backed up by a special strategic strike force of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Climate chaos will continue with the backing of corporate and government thugs, and human rights will always be secondary to the demand for extraction at all costs.
The powers that be simply do not want solutions. They want to continue the facade of pretending to care about the planet, our children and the future. The priority is to maintain the status quo while being seen to advocate activism that they oppose. Towards that end, Sharm el-Sheikh is the perfectly controlled venue nestled securely within the confines of a ruthless police state where intimidation and fear will guarantee that absolutely nothing will be accomplished.
But hey, there will be free Coca-Cola, thanks to the official COP 27 sponsor.
In 1994, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat — known as UN Climate Change — was created to support the global response to climate change threats. Its annual numbered Conference of the Parties (COP) summit brings together representatives of the 198 countries that have ratified the Convention. COP 27 takes place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 6 to 18, 2022.
Paul Watson