COP – Corporate Oil Propaganda – Copaganda?

The COP process has long been an exercise in “contained opposition” – a sort of chimera of change – where the global north gets to act as ‘white saviour’ whilst maintaining the vast bulk of its power and polluting resources. As the COP numbers rise (we’re at 29 and counting) the whole phenomenon becomes more and more ridiculous and obscene, none more than the present one in Baku which kicked off with OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais telling the climate summit that crude oil and natural gas were a “Gift from God”.

The process does allow for some performative protest – as we saw first hand in Glasgow – often with special designated areas and appointed ‘protestors’. Anyone not permitted is immediately faced with extraordinary punitive policing and surveillance. The thing is like staged theatre. Many people who used to be invested in this process are now just completely uninterested, deeply cynical, or burnt-out. The annual sense of expectancy has been replaced by a mass disinterest accumulated over years of experience.

However, while the exercise may be useless in terms of halting the juggernaut of climate breakdown, it is useful in terms of understanding late capitalism; global power and policing techniques; the monsters of climate diplomacy; and the almost complete failure of the environmental movement.

For much of the last week, the draft documents out of the U.N. climate talks had a range of possible outcomes. The primary goal, an international climate finance target at least marginally in line with the extreme costs the developing world is facing, seemed a distant prospect. Activists and representatives from the global south were calling for a number in the trillions, while the rich countries that would provide it havered and wavered. On Friday, the official last day of COP29 (most of these go into overtime), a draft with an actual number emerged: $250 billion per year from rich to poor, by 2035.

This is truly pitiful.

As Harjeet Singh, Director Fossil Treaty said: “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

“No deal is better than a bad deal.” @harjeet11

🚨 The new #COP29 climate finance goal just dropped—$250B/year by 2035—and it’s unacceptable.

❌ Falls far short of the trillions needed.
❌ No commitment to grants—just more debt.

It’s time for justice, not loans. Watch, share,… pic.twitter.com/DJ6gO0udmf

— Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (@fossiltreaty) November 22, 2024

This process has been unfolding and collapsing in our lifetime. It’s really worth remembering how this came about, as we suffer from living in a society with in-built institutional memory loss.

The objective of the UN climate treaty was to stop pollution and climate injustice,a nd it was legally binding.

As Vandana Shiva has written:

“Since the industrialised countries were responsible for the pollution caused by fossil fuels, the emission reduction targets of the treaty original applied to the 37 industrialised nations, identified as Annex B countries at COP 3 [3! – Ed] in Kyoto in 1997. The first phase of the Kyoto Protocol required rich nations, the historic polluters, to reduce emissions by 5 per cent, compared to 1990 levels, between 2008 and 2012. However, the polluters transformed these legally binding restrictions on pollution and emissions into trade in pollution through the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.” (from The Nature of Nature, the Metabolic Disorder of Climate Change)

The process ever since has been one of backtracking and a sort of global sleight of hand, or rather a mesmerising process by which the COP participants and adjacent fleet of climate media, collaborate in a ritual to persuade us (and themselves) that this economic system we are living in and under – is reformable, when we know no it’s not survivable.

The two most significant meetings were held in Copenhagen and Paris in 2009 and 2015. In 2009 Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen, proposed a dismantling of the legal framework and its substitution of the legal framework and its substitution with voluntary commitments from a small group of countries outside the conference negotiations.

The farce we are seeing unfolding in Baku actually started back in COP 23 in Dubai when the event was presided over by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

It was the first time in the history of the climate convention that the CEO of an oil giant presided over the negotiations. Now, in Azerbaijan, the Sultan is replaced by OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais.

As we have seen with Israel recently, the ‘global order’ – as a set of what’s called the ‘rules based order’ – doesn’t really exist. Or, it exists formally but not actually.

Tonight, the UN’s #COP29 climate summit is on the verge of collapse after countries most affected by climate change walked out of talks over funding, saying they are not being heard. Oxfam called it “a soulless triumph for the rich” and a “global Ponzi scheme”. They said:

“The money on the table is not only a pittance in comparison to what’s really needed –it’s not even real “money”, by and large. Rather, it’s a motley mix of loans and privatized investment –a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit. The destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonorable deal. The richest polluters need to wise up —and pay up.” 

350 released this statement saying: