I was encouraged by former UN chief Christiana Figueres’ comments reported by The Guardian‘s Dharna Noor September 21, 2023, “If [fossil fuel companies] are going to be [at COP28] only to be obstructors, and only to put spanners into the system, they should not be there.” The subtitle notes, “‘My patience ran out,’ said Christiana Figueres, who for years had advocated oil companies should be involved in policymaking talks.”
This complements my November 28, 2022, post “Circus” COPS and Civil Society “Clowns,” and my November 21, 2022 post “Good COP, Bad COP” in which I wrote, “To use a football metaphor, imagine a fullback dropping the ball 27 consecutive games. Maybe it’s time to get a new fullback. [par break] In this case, that means two separate COPs each year, one with fossil fuel interests, and one without. Global media, governments, and citizens could decide which COP to focus on. [ . . . . ] Politicians and Big Oil executives have children too, and may eventually see the shared responsibility to protect all children in every country. Unfortunately, the global community, especially in the global south, can’t wait another 10 years or longer.”
Similarly, Sandra Laville wrote in The Guardian June 22, 2023, “The Church of England is divesting from fossil fuels in its multibillion pound endowment and pension funds over climate concerns and what the church claims are recent U-turns by oil and gas companies.” Laville noted, “Responding to the announcement, Jennifer Larbie, Christian Aid’s head of global advocacy, said: ‘It is telling that the Church of England, which has worked tirelessly to engage with the oil and gas industry and shift it on to a sustainable approach, has decided that these companies are beyond the pale.’”
Recently, the UK and Sweden seem to be following the advice of a Shell CEO who told Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Founding Director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let’s get rich quick before the world ends, huh?” I included Schellnhuber’s words in my August 25, 2018 post before the video was deleted.
In other words, as I wrote in my October 10, 2022 post, “Deactivating Big Oil now will likely be no less dramatic than Deactivation of Hal 9000.”
Here are two questions for my readers in 110 countries:
1) What would a Nonviolent Political D-Day look like at some future COP?
2) Would you like to do this before or after Earth’s coral reefs are bleached, Amazon rainforest is gone, and island nations are submerged?
Late 2023 and Summer 2024 look bleak from various forecasts. In my previous post I linked Dave Borlace’s video The heat may not kill you, but the global food crisis might! – September 17, 2023, in which he noted a Mintec August 21, 2023 paper with “forecast updates [ . . . ] pointing towards a Very Strong El Nino event [ . . . ] triggering extreme and potentially destructive weather globally,” and a Barclay’s January 2023 paper noting “extreme weather” as one of three factors in “the current predicament” [ . . . . ] “with the food price volatility further exposing the fragility of our global food system: rising food insecurity, social unrest, human displacement and migration are all possible effects.”
I also chose Dave Borlace’s new video Big Oil, Big Lies and Big Al… as one of my favorites. It was posted yesterday, and already has 87,496 views.
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