Sound the alarm
When the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference — more affectionately known as “COP28” — broke up this week, most everyone in the final group photo was smiling. As well they might, since most everyone got what they wanted, including an iron-clad, line-in-the-sand target date for a universal end to all oil-based production. It was, in a word, fabulous.
Unfortunately I use the word “fabulous” in its less common meaning, that is, having no basis in reality, mythical, pertaining to fables. The COP28 group photo looked like an annual meeting of OPEC, with more dishdasha in the front row centre than you could shake a divining rod at. And the final date that everyone so joyously agreed on was 2050, part of the fabulous, mythical future when, presumably, everyone will have finally made all the money in the world and there will be no oil left — or planet for that matter — for anyone to worry about.
Another word for COP28 is “disaster,” as in its more common usage, that is, “unmitigated.” Another word is COP-out. But the bad news doesn’t stop there. It turns out that only this week we have discovered (or remembered that we once discovered, I’m not sure which) that after the sea levels rise another five feet, water will infiltrate all the toxic waste refining facilities along the Eastern United States. That in turn could poison at least all the nearby groundwater and possibly much of the ocean itself. Are we having fun yet?
By the way, those are just the reachable toxic waste treatment facilities that we know about. Nobody is really sure what China or North Korea or Russia or Brazil or any of a dozen countries with borders on or near the ocean do with all their toxic wastes.
China, as we know, buries tons of the plastic that we all so diligently recycle. I think it would be incredibly starry-eyed of us to expect that they are being similarly responsible with their toxic wastes. In other words, five feet of sea-level rise may be wholly optimistic. It might just take two feet of rising ocean to unleash that particular kraken. Or even one. Let’s face it, we don’t really know.
Oh, and speaking of the ocean, there’s also that pesky problem of frozen methane which is trapped as a solid under our oceans. That’s also vulnerable to melting due to climate change and could be released into the sea. Methane, as I’m sure you know, is a greenhouse gas, so warmer temperatures will create even more greenhouse gases which in turn will create even warmer temperatures, in an endless feedback loop of our worst nightmare.
For any Republicans reading this, if you think America’s got a border problem now, just wait when climate change creates millions — possibly billions — of brand new refugees fleeing for their lives. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Of course, Republicans don’t really care about problems at the border. They love the problems at the border. It’s become a convenient stick to beat liberals with and scare their gullible and stupid and ignorant and superstitious base.
Anyway, not to worry, the oil magnates and latter-day robber barons of COP28 have everything in hand. For the remainder of the 20s, all of the 30s and, let’s face it, all of the 40s, nobody has anything to worry about. Once 2050 rolls around we can deal with it then.
Needless to say I’m being cynically facetious. Needless to say, COP28 and world governments have dropped the ball again, and it’s up to us to pick that ball up and run with it. Stop waiting for them to do something about it. We are them, and it’s up to us.
Nobody can afford to sit idly by and let this happen to our planet, our species and the animals who share this beautiful globe with us. It’s time for action.
Difficult, you say? Of course it is, what worthwhile thing isn’t? And when, as a species, we have met with difficulties in the past, we always rose to meet them. This time we have no choice. Besides, have you got something better to do? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.