Conference of Parties 29 - Big Oil

 

The U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, has ended with wealthy, polluting nations pledging to pay a total of $300 billion a year to help developing nations cope with the climate crisis until 2035. Climate justice activists and Global South nations slammed the final finance deal as a "drop in the bucket" compared to what is needed.

It's has become increasingly, disappointingly, horrifically obvious that the annual United Nations climate negotiations... the Conference of the Parties, or COP... has become co-opted by Big Oil. It is now commonplace for increasing numbers of fossil fuel lobbyists and big oil execs attending, to cut back-room oil deals on the sidelines of the conference. It is a slap in the face to witness the placement of oil executives in leadership positions at the conference. As former UN leaders Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres join global climate leaders in calling for an overhaul of the system, documents newly uncovered by DRILLED, a global multimedia reporting project focused on climate accountability... reveal that the fossil fuel industry's influence over the COP process was a foregone conclusion, embedded into its design from the very beginning.

Brandon Wu, the director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! ...We are in a very bad place. Earlier today, we called for developing countries not to accept a bad deal, to say no deal is better than a bad deal. What we have right now is a very, very bad deal. Remember, our baseline, what we have right now, which is not working, it’s not enough, is $100 billion a year. That pledge was made in 2009. So we’re barely getting any increase at all. And what’s actually worse is that it could include private investment, market rate loans. It’s not an actual transfer of resources from rich to poor countries, which is what we need to solve this crisis.

Wu went on to point out... The U.S., at every turn, has undermined the climate regime from the beginning. So, what we’re seeing now is actually the end of a 10-year strategy to exit from our obligations to provide climate finance. The Paris Agreement itself was the end of the U.S. strategy to exit from having any obligations to reduce our own emissions. Remember, we moved from the Kyoto Protocol, which had binding obligations, to the Paris Agreement, which is 100% voluntary. It was the U.S. that was behind that.

And now what we’re seeing is, in the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, there’s a binding obligation for developed countries to provide finance. Then, again, that could mean mobilizing private investment. It doesn’t actually mean moving public money from the Global North to the Global South. And so, it’s an exit. It’s a great escape, is what we’re calling it, a great escape from their obligations to the rest of the world.

The idea of global cooperation on environmental issues was born at the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in 1972 in Stockholm. Air pollution, chemical pollution, the ozone layer, acid rain, and, yes, global warming, were all topics on the agenda and industry was not invited, although that didn’t stop some governments from smuggling them in. That conference gave rise to the UN Environment Program, or UNEP, which was tasked with overseeing global efforts to tackle pollution. This time, industry was included, but contained: UNEP launched its Industry Program to facilitate discussions with various global industries. 

“There’s never really been a time when there was a pure understanding of climate change that was unpolluted by the industry’s interference and involvement and influence,” University of Oxford researcher Ben Franta has reported... “Our whole understanding of the issue, from the very beginning... and by our, I mean ‘the world,’ and by ‘the issue,’ I mean ‘global warming’... was influenced by the oil and gas industry and the fossil fuel industry in general.”

How did we get here? What choices were made, what opportunities were lost, and what cautions were simply disregarded. What, when, and how much did the fossil fuel industry know about climate change and what was done with what they knew? In the United States, the fundamental, undeniable reality of the impact of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions was successfully and dramatically obscured by organizations deliberately spreading misinformation about climate change.

Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation... an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.

Big Oil... Big Tech... Big Pharma... the Tobacco Industry... the Arms Industry (aka: the Military-Industrial Complex) are all components of the rising Corporatocracy. A corporation has no heart, no soul, no morals. When it hurts people or damages the environment, it will feel no sorrow or remorse because it is intrinsically unable to (It may sometimes apologize, but that’s not remorse... that’s public relations).

As the astute reader knows... Corporatocracy is a recent term used to refer to an economic and political system controlled by corporations or corporate interests. It is most often used today as a term to describe the current economic situation in a particular country, especially the United States. This is different from corporatism, which is the organization of society into groups with common interests. Corporatocracy as a term is often used by observers across the political spectrum.

- Wikipedia

As the COP 29 demonstrates... the major corporations... the corporate bosses... the American Archons... are moving to consolidate power. The victory of 45 (soon to be 47) in the 2024 presidential elections... appears to be corporate friendly... if not to the Military-Industrial Complex... then to Big Tech, as the presence of Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago indicates. As such, recent developments also indicate a continued rise, if not complete victory, for a corporatocracy-controlled global economy, ala the dark, cyberpunk vision of William Gibson's Neuromancr.

It is additionally apparent that the true adversary of we the people, is the corporate overlords. Fear not... for we will be keeping our eye on the nefarious exploits of the corporatocracy, and will report back. Stay tuned for more developments dear, intrepid readers, stay tuned...

Additional Reading...

Conference of the Parties 28 Boondoggle

Eco-Tek

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