COP (Continued Oil Production) 29

COP29, same again with added fossil sprinkles, kerching, £$£$€£€, thank you.

Those annoying climate protesters, what a bunch of holier-than-thou hypocrites, travelling around in petrol and diesel cars, then glueing their hands to the road to stop freedom loving drivers. Okay, and a mother taking her child to hospital, that was a bit hashtag awks. The Daily effing Mail had a field day with that.

Or those annoying kids who cycle to art galleries and throw custard and soup at priceless artworks. Why? It’s just silly, what do they think these ridiculous actions are going to achieve? They just annoy people, and we all know people do not want to think or talk about fossil fuel, they don’t care if we keep burning oil, it’s just silly to shout ‘just stop oil.’ We all burn oil, there is now way the human race can survive without oil, it’s like saying ‘just stop cake.’

It’s boring, who cares, what about the cost of living crisis (entirely down to the costs of fossil fuels but never mind) what about the electricity and gas price cap going up (entirely down to the costs of fossil fuels but never mind) who’s got time to think about the fossil fuel industry? (Exactly what the fossil fuel industry want us to not think about)

So we’ve just seen, or in the case of the majority of the global population, utterly ignored, the pitiful debacle of COP29, held in Baku, the capital of the petrostate of Azerbaijan.

Some of you may know that at the opening of a conference whose primary aim is to dramatically reduce the burning of fossil fuel, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, said that oil and gas are “a gift from God.”

He added that the rest of the world should not criticise countries that are blessed with such natural resources. I agree, we shouldn’t pick on them, we should add them into the level criticism of the countries that burn the stuff to the same extent as the countries that make a fortune out of it, which, in 99% of cases, ends up with a few super rich elite members of any petrostate

Beachside properties in Azerbaijan

Delightful sea views in Azerbiajan

Whatever, it was a disgraceful thing to say at such an event, host it, and then tell everyone attending “screw you and your silly climate nonsense.’ Brilliant.

It probably is the biggest waste of time COP since they started, and they don’t exactly have a glowing reputation for galvanising action, and I’ll get to the climate finance bit later.

I attended COP 26 in Glasgow back in 2021, we were there to film a report about the event for the Fully Charged Show, and I did a few interviews and a couple of panel discussions. All the time I was there, I was blown away by the commitment, energy and optimism of people from various governments, pressure groups and activist communities from around the world who were there. This was one of the first big events I attended after Covid. It was busy, and although I never got near the high security area where respected world leaders like Boris Effing Johnson were blabbering pointlessly, I met a lot of amazing people.

COP26-Glasgow. I had a cup of coffee sitting at one of the tables above.

One thing was very obvious and much discussed, the sheer number, power and financial muscle of the fossil fuel lobbying groups attending. And you can’t just buy a ticket to attend a COP, it’s not a conference open to hoi polloi, you have to apply be become part of a national delegation, so all the fossil lobbyist’s can only attending because a national government arranges it.

COP26 Glasgow. Two old blokes and one total Bozo. (on the left)

I’m sure not every nation state does this, but clearly a hell of a lot of them do. It’s not just the obvious big producers like the USA and Norway, or the petrostates of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Nigeria, Azerbaijan and Venezuela .

Hundreds of fossil fuel industry representatives from an array of multi trillion dollar oil companies don’t pay to attend. They flood the halls, pressure the delegates, spread lies, fear, uncertainty and doubt at truly industrial scale, smashing any hope of genuine change which might result in a tiny reduction in the sale of this critically important product.

I felt like such a numpty when I learned this in Glasgow back in 2021. How on earth can the UN, and the organisers of these conferences allow these incredibly well paid people to have such a huge and unchallenged influence on the proceedings.

These lobbyists are all full time professionals, spending the rest of they year discussing planning and inventing ways to sink any possible challenge to their vast global sales. They will manipulate the narrative with incredible skill and subtlety. They will manage the ideas being discussed, and if you think about it for a moment, the notion of climate finance is brilliant for the oil and gas industry.

Lobbyists will have arranged discussions on this topic, they will have advised national governments from developing nations that it is a good idea for the rich nations to pay the poorer nations who are more vulnerable to the immediate effects of climate change. They are right of course, nations in the developed west, basically Europe and the USA, have burnt trillions of tons of oil, gas and coal and greatly benefitted from doing so.

And so that’s what has been arranged, developed nations have agreed to give a modest amount of money over 5 years to help smaller, poorer nations who are regularly ravaged by extreme weather.

Here’s a little question. Have any fossil fuel companies, who have profited even more enormously from us burning their stuff, donated anything to alleviate the suffering of people affected by drought, floods, higher temperatures and devastating storms?

Don’t be an idiot, of course they haven’t, they spend their time leveraging and lobbying for eye watering subsidies for themselves from powerless national governments, who are still utterly dependent on their products.

So, if in future we think it’s important to hold international climate conferences, it has to start with a cast iron agreement that no fossil fuel company, lobbyist or representative has any access whatsoever, no matter what crap excuse these clever but in my book unpleasant people come up with. They will still be steering that narrative from outside these events, pushing garbage con job technologies like carbon capture and storage, clean gas, transition fuels, hybrid vehicles and a host of other two bit shoddy lies.

And after all the arguments, the demonstrations, the half baked compromised agreements, the one thing we can all do is try everything going not to burn fossil fuel and to avoid the tsunami of single use plastics. It’s really hard, it’s not our fault if we have to rely on their toxic products, they control the markets, the distribution system and in many cases, our governments.

But our overarching aim should be to move on, leave this poxy fuel and let the companies rot in their own bile.

There’s no way I will live to see it, but I’ve spoken to enough people who work in the oil and gas sector over the last ten years to understand that they know their days are numbered.

But I don’t think it’s a pipe dream to state, we will slowly, painfully, move beyond burning coal, and oil and gas.