56 | New Scientist | 20 November 2021
those with most to lose in a melting
world. The corporate-sponsored
Climate Pledge Theatre attracted
much ribaldry on social media, as
a kind of meta-commentary on
the lack of climate action for which
the COP process has become famed.
Alcohol flowed most freely in the
Scandinavian pavilions. Presumably
for lack of anything particularly
ecological to say, Qatar ignored
climate change entirely and focused
on eye-bulgingly strong coffee and
scale models of the stadia for the
2022 football world cup.
On the final Thursday afternoon,
with time running out to seal a deal,
UN Secretary General António
Guterres warned in the main hall
that the world was on a track to
catastrophic warming. In Pakistan’s
pavilion, people were watching the
T20 world cup semi-final against
Australia. There is important stuff,
and then there is cricket.Buzzword RINGO
BINGO, ENGO, RINGO, TUNGO,
YOUNGO, IPO, LGMA, WGC and
Farmers: not Santa’s reindeer or
an expanded and updated list
of the seven dwarfs, but the nine
“constituencies” with observer
status at climate negotiations.
These are roiling seas of
acronyms and initialisms.
“BINGO” is an exalted nested
example, the grouping of
“business and industry NGOS”.
“Farmers” are farmers, and we
leave you to work out the rest.
Some abbreviations have
become untethered from meaning,
floating adrift of words that might
reasonably constitute them. CMA
is the shorthand for signatories
of the Paris climate accord; quite
how is also left as an exercise for
the reader. COP = conference of
the parties, but you knew that one.Omnibus Potemkin
Outside the perimeter fence,
protesters marched, coalesced and
unfurled, while Glasgow, the Gaelic
“dear green place”, gave of its best.
More than its best, perhaps, as fleets
of electric buses ferried delegates to
and from the city centre, travelling
free thanks to a universally valid
public transport smartcard. Perish
the thought that any such radical
policies should be adopted in our
journey towards net zero.Fair COP
“HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME”,
read an artwork in neon lights
opposite COP26’s one and
only bar, an urgent message to
delegates both to drink up and to
face up to their responsibility to
change the world. When a deal was
finally struck deep into overtime,
exhausted delegates negotiated
the world’s pavilions in an
advanced state of deconstruction.
Insert metaphor here.
It wasn’t enough; it never could
be. COP26 was messy and human,
a chaotic, uneasy amalgam of
science, diplomacy and activism.
And it supplied our best hope. ❚Australia. “I really don’t want to
be wasting time on this,” supplied
Switzerland, in an admirably
neutral if undiplomatic vein.
This is how the future is decided.Gaiety of nations
Considerably more fun was the
exhibition space, where nations
and organisations set up pavilions
to outcompete each other in green
messaging. Feedback’s highlights
included the International Bamboo
and Rattan Organisation’s bamboo
bicycle, delightfully lightweight and
a joy to ride, although it remains
to be seen how it would fare in
an altercation with a panda... car.
The life-size polar bear models in
the pavilion from the Pacific island
nation Tuvalu were a reliable draw
for selfie-seekers, at first sight an
implausible juxtaposition, then a
poignant statement connectingOccasionally, Feedback is allowed
out of the office stationery
cupboard. Just very occasionally,
we do so to attend international
summits where the fate of
humanity hangs in the balance.
And so we found ourselves bound
for COP26 in Glasgow, armed with
65 years of accumulated wisdom –
institutional, but not quite yet
institutionalised.Eliminating elephants
If we kissed the ground on arrival,
it was only to commune with a floor
poster at Glasgow Central station
proclaiming that Scotland’s railways
had reduced their carbon footprint
by 5000 elephants, and inviting us
to join their “journey to net zero”.
We can only endorse the
suggestion from Alex Bowman,
a Glasgow native who also
spotted the poster, that we need a
standard prototype elephant if such
reductions are to be verified. Having
net-zero elephants strikes us as a
more problematic concept, although
not outside the envelope of where
we might be heading if we can’t
bend the climate curve.Subtle diplomacy
“Do you have a copy of the text?” a
delegate hissed at us. We didn’t: we
only wandered into this room, its
desks furnished with microphones
arranged in a large square pointing
inwards, in search of a cup of tea.
It turned out to be video-linked
to negotiations next door that were
hammering out a communiqué
on long-term climate finance. In
fact, no one had a copy of the text,
which made things a little hard to
follow. The negotiation facilitator,
who called out nations by number
to speak their turns, had a world-
weary air. “I feel like a bingo caller,”
he said at one stage.
A particular sticking point was
a clause saying the conference
“notes” the efforts of high-income
countries towards mobilising
$100 billion a year of long-term
climate finance. Make it “expresses
concern at the lack of ”, suggested
India. Try “welcomes”, counteredGot a story for Feedback?
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