Mathew D. Rose – COP28: It is time for climate scientists to come out of the cold

Since our political elites condoned Israel’s genocide in Gaza we know they do not value human lives – except their own – or our environment. Just profit. It is time to accept this truth.

Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE

As we have discovered over time, climate scientists, like many scientists, are not only extremely dedicated to their work, but they are convinced of its importance, which they should well be. Many feel that climate scientists are doing the world an existential service with their work on climate change. The cris de coeur of the climate emergency movement is “Follow the Science”. Thus many climate scientists are amazed that governments are not heeding their warnings or following the polices they have put forward to stop climate change.

On the other hand, climate scientists, like many other academics, live in their own world, an Ivory Tower is the metaphor commonly used. Politics is not a factor in their extensive calculations. Worse yet, many climate scientists are employees or funded by the state, some even by fossil fuel companies, directly or indirectly, which often brings them into the conflict of de facto biting the hand that feeds them. This fact may not be included in their public statements, but it is most certainly included in their bank statements.

If we are honest, we are not making much progress towards stopping climate change. CO2 levels are increasing, even in economically advanced nations, who claim to be have robust CO2 reduction plans in place. The short lived diminutions have been due to economic recessions caused by financial crises. Roger Pielke Jr. dubbed this the Iron Law of Climate Policy: “When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out every time.”

In the EU and other industrial nations we are witnessing a great deal of backtracking with regard to climate policies. Corporations and the political class had been forced to beat a hasty retreat in the past years as the climate change movement took to the streets, but that did not mean they gave up. They adapted their strategies and ramped up their lobbying massively sparing no expenses. COP26 was a farce, COP27 was not taken seriously, and now COP28 is to be a trade fair for fossil fuel producing nations and companies. Still, as always, climate scientists will attend, present their increasingly urgent messages and prognoses, then go home, while the politicians, corporate leaders, and their lobbyist will politely listen then withdraw to a grand piss up.

As the climate activist Bill McKibben wrote “We spent a long time thinking we were engaged in an argument about data and reason, but now we realise it’s a fight over money and power.” The question is how far Western governments are willing to go to defend the profits of large corporations. Where is the red line?

With the support of these same governments for Israel’s genocide in Gaza the answer is becoming clearer: there is no limit. What is the difference between the extermination and displacement of two and a half million Palestinians – children, women, and men – and the extermination and displacement of two and a half billion people throughout the world, as long they are the “other”, preferably with dark skin in the Global South? Nor do other nations seem to really care. Where are there any major reactions, such as Global South nations refusing to sell there oil and gas until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. For all those profitably involved the world is currently in a perfect balance – at least for that ten percent of the global populace. There is nothing meaningful coming to reduce CO2 if governments cannot translate it into profits for international corporations including finance.

We are seeing a similar process in Ukraine: hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, the nation destroyed, a political process whose path was strewn with opportunities to avoid that war. Ukrainians and Russians do not belong to the Western industrial nations, who have carefully avoided committing their own forces, instead seeking ways to secure economic and financial opportunities for their corporations. Not only are Ukrainians supposed to fight to the last soldier, but also until the last hryvnia and the last square centimetre of land is in the possession of Western banks and corporations.

We all know that to realise a global programme to stop climate change we need a unified world effort. With the US, supported by NATO, initiating wars and conflicts throughout the world to maintain its international hegemony and secure its corporate dominance, how can such a unified effort be realised?

These are not caring elites. Lives and the planet are irrelevant in their calculations of profit maximisation. Like the climate scientists, they too sit in front of their spreadsheets, instead dedicated to increasing wealth for corporations and the rich, not reducing CO2. Their greatest worry is how to prevent the guards who will be protecting the perimeters of their crisis retreats from those seeking succour, from turning their guns on them when they realise the boss is a superfluous mouth to feed.

I do not wish to portray climate scientists as autistic, spending their whole day feeding data into computers. Geopolitics was not part of their curriculum. Nonetheless many have come to grips with political reality. So many that I shall not mention any so as not offend those not included. They are definitely there. One may not hear them, but like so many progressives they are muted by state and mainstream media, to which should be added social media. To overcome this many participated in direct action resulting in arrests and convictions. They have our respect.

Nor do I wish to leave it at climate scientists. There are many other academics who have raised radical voices concerning the corrupt and capitalist diktat behind climate change polices of Western governments. Again, too many to list.

First warnings concerning climate change were ignored for decades. Plan A to prevent climate change has failed: when in December 2015 the delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris concluded its legally binding international treaty on climate change and fell into each others arms in joy, this must have already been clear for many. In the meantime anyone can see that international laws are nothing more that a propaganda tool used by governments and corporations who in reality regard them as they do their doormat.

Following the realisation that the Paris Accord had failed, there was a scramble to develop a Plan B, whereby we were told that the market would prevent climate change and we should somehow influence, better yet confirm this with petitions, demonstrations, and protests.

With Cop 28 it is obvious for anyone that wishes to know, that Plan B had failed, as we shall see in Dubai, which will be the last nail in the COP coffin. The question is where is Plan C? What real use is a new climate model that confirms the thousands of climate models that preceded it – that we are destroying life on our planet as we know it. For many there is already enough subjective experience to confirm this. Those who wish to know, do. Those who do not wish to know, will never accept climate change.

So maybe it is time for climate scientist to join those of us in search of a Plan C that does not include the glorious technical solutions that cannot function being put about by our so-called elites. It is time for climate scientists to come out of the cold and join a human race that needs no more watered down reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and no more COPs to tell us what isn’t going to be done about climate change. Join us with our backs to the wall and seek real solutions and how to enforce them – in practice and not with climate models.

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