22 November 2022 – We’re the clowns, smiling manically as weak pledges are presented as progress, amid mayhem.
COP27 has ended. After more than two weeks of negotiations at the climate summit, there is a deal of sorts that keeps the climate negotiations ticking over, but it is weak and is covered with the fingerprints of petrostates. Everyone – many scientists, companies, NGOs and climate activists included – is terrified of calling time on the COP process. Yet, for the sake of humanity we must ask what purpose the UN’s yearly COP conferences serve, question how these events are run and wonder whether we have all become clowns in the climate circus.