This year, no fewer than 90,000 have abandoned their credibility, boarded their jet planes, and made their way to the bright lights of Dubai for the gabfest that is the annual Conference of the Parties (usually referred to as a ‘COP’) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
By all accounts, it has been a lot of fun, tables groaning with gourmet burgers and fine wines, with only slightest seasoning of guilt over the enjoyment of all this excess at a time when most of us are struggling
Each year, hundreds of posturing delegates and thousands of protestors, celebs, and assorted hangers-on fly in from around the world to lecture us all on our carbon footprints. They then start up the negotiations, rapidly reach deadlock, before announcing a last-minute breakthrough. Then, in the cold light of day, everybody accepts nothing has been achieved beyond expanded waistlines and serious hangovers for all the delegates.
