Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

DAVID BLACKMON: Why Don’t These Activists Help Save The Planet By Holding Their Fancy Climate Conference On Zoom?

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The blaring headline attached to a November 27 story at Politico.eu reads, “UAE plotted to use COP28 to push for oil and gas deals, leaked notes show.” Horrors.

But the first line of the story is even better: “The world’s top climate summit has become embroiled in a hypocrisy scandal, days before the start of key talks.” What? Hypocrisy on display at a UN-sponsored annual global summit, you say? How can that possibly be? Why, that’s never happened before!

Wait, are you sure about that? What about the photos we see each year of the local airports of Sharm el Sheikh, Glasgow, Paris or whichever other international city is designated to serve as the COP summit’s host, filled to the gills with all those private jets used by the conference attendees? All to attend a summit during which they plan to lecture the globe’s little people about the urgent need to control and reduce their personal, regional and national carbon footprints? Is that not the very essence of hypocrisy?

Or what about the stories associated with these annual confabs detailing gluttonous, $500 per plate dinners at which dozens of $1,000+ bottles of wine are consumed, engaged in by the attendees even as 1 billion or more human beings in developing nations still lack access to electricity? Is that not hypocrisy defined?

And what of the stories each year of the massive upticks in prostitution and demand for high-dollar escorts that invariably come up as attendees of these COP summits sample the local delights? Isn’t such exploitation of less fortunate locals by international elites an unseemly display of hypocrisy?

These examples of rank hypocrisy on blatant display at every one of these events will no doubt go unreported by the energy transition boosters at Politico.eu and most of the legacy media for reasons that are by now obvious to everyone. That cat’s truly out of the bag, though they may not realize it still.

But a story about the host country, which happens to be a big oil producing nation, planning for its officials to leverage their discussions during the conference to hopefully make business deals becomes a major “scandal” for the simple fact that, well, the UAE is a big oil producing nation. Never mind the obvious reality that pretty much every one of the projected 70,000 attendees at COP 28 have made similar plans to leverage their own discussions during the conference to their own advantage, it only becomes a “scandal” when oil deals are to be made.

Speaking of that projection that 70,000 officials, hangers-on, staffers, activists, grifters and assorted other miscreants plan to attend COP 28: That is double the number who attended last year’s COP 27 summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. This of course means that the collective carbon footprint of COP 28 is likely to be double the 62,695 tons of next emissions the UN itself admitted to being produced by the COP 27 confab. That huge number is highly reduced by the application of a formula including all sorts of ostensible carbon offsets, most of which are overstated and many of which are no doubt completely fraudulent in nature. Isn’t this a clear example of hypocrisy at an event supposedly focused on cutting carbon emissions?

Of course, it is.

This leads to the inevitable question of why this conference should be held in person at all? Since 2020, we have been constantly lectured by these very same global elites to reduce our travel and cut our hours of commuting to and from work by taking advantage of the array of technologies which have been developed to facilitate remote meetings. If these 70,000 who plan to attend COP 28 were really focused on cutting emissions, wouldn’t they start with their own? Of course, they would.

So, why don’t they do that? The answer is obvious: Because they’re all there to leverage their face-to-face meetings, fabulous dinners, and all other conversations to their own personal and business advantage, and that is far easier to accomplish in person than on a Zoom call. No different than the officials at the UAE.

That’s the truth about COP 28, and we should not be shy about telling it.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.