Spooky irony in COP26’s scheduling

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2021 (1113 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whoever decided to start the UN Climate Change Conference (Conference of the Parties, or COP26) in Glasgow on Halloween certainly had a macabre sense of humour. Billed as the last-ditch opportunity for governments to keep global warming to a level that is only disastrous (instead of catastrophic), I fear, however, COP26 is likely to produce more tricks than treats.

Fear is the right word, because of the deeper symbolic history of what Halloween means, not the ghosts and goblins roaming suburban neighborhoods. All Hallow’s Eve is the night before All Saints’ Day, when the unsettled dead have one last revengeful fling at the world, before the heavenly order is reasserted, the spirits are consigned to their proper places and the saints are back in control.

It’s hard to say who will be cast as the evil characters at COP26, though there will probably be more than enough demonizing to go around. The “Parties” will dismiss the protesters from civil society as disruptive and unsupportive, while the protesters will no doubt echo Greta Thunberg, rebuking the usual political “blah, blah, blah” without any concrete action to avert the disaster ahead.

By the end, we will see who (or what) is behind the masks the political leaders will all be wearing to the Glasgow party.

Unfortunately, as usual, the ghosts of fossils past will have control of the COP agenda. While it is impossible to calculate the actual numbers, governments around the world subsidize the fossil fuel industry (directly or indirectly) by something like $11 million a minute — 24/7, 365 days a year. Considering the expense of developing and running things, along with price and market volatility, I suspect these subsidies are effectively the industry’s profit margin, still returning healthy dividends to shareholders.

Eliminating these subsidies would therefore make fossil fuels unprofitable —the capital markets would then head for greener pastures (pun intended), leaving ruined investors behind.

That’s what makes Halloween such a macabre choice: COP26 is literally a battle between the ghosts of dead fossils and the next generation of the living. It would be nice if, the next morning, these ghosts were banished and the saints left in charge of the future of all living creatures, but this is unlikely to happen.

We can’t underestimate the death throes of the fossil fuel industry, and the political and economic power of its lobbies around the world, fighting to hold onto its wealth at the expense (literally) of everyone and everything else.

This is why, in Canada, the federal government continues to spend billions on their pipelines to nowhere out west “for the benefit of all Canadians,” while the lack of infrastructure and alternative energy development in Ontario and places east mean the bulk of Canada’s population continues to be vulnerable to whatever the global oil market delivers.

Given the high political cost of these western pipelines, the lack of even potential economic returns on their investment in a market uninterested in oilsands crude, and the certainty of environmental impacts from spills (the cleanup of which the feds are now responsible for conducting), there has got to be more to the story.

I wonder what some good forensic accounting/investigation might turn up about who really profits from the continued construction of these pipelines, because it certainly isn’t “all Canadians,” present or future.

The fright show in Glasgow will thus be a reflection of what happens everywhere else, every day, much closer to home. For the thousands of civil-society protesters outside, it will once again be “the parties of the Conference,” as they are excluded from any negotiations inside and otherwise ignored by the players.

Something has got to change, and I suspect without firm leadership to maintain a non-violent atmosphere, the frustration of the protesters (whose future is being ruined) will eventually boil over.

As a global society, and as Canadians, however, we can’t allow our futures to be determined by the self-interest of a few, regardless of the power (and the means of social violence) they have at their disposal. When Prince Charles and Prince William speak out against inaction on the climate, and even the Queen herself is publicly not amused, it is much harder for the old fossils and their minions to pretend they have the best interests of anyone but themselves in mind.

Yet when the mirrored helmets, water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas are eventually deployed, the truncheons will fall with equal savagery on the children, the parents, the grandparents and all those who truly care about the future ahead — in other words, on all the saints.

When that happens — and I fear the time will be soon, as the climate worsens, frustrations grow, and the old fossils become more fearful of losing their position — we will have to ask ourselves just what kind of society are we trying to protect, from whom, and why.

As Thunberg also said, “Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.”

Peter Denton is an activist, writer and academic, double-vaccinated and still working from home in rural Manitoba.