COP out?

So Andres Manuel López Obrador suggests (AMLO insta a líderes a actuar y no sólo dar discursos en cumbres, Roberto Garduño y Fabiola Martínez, Jornada, 4 November 2021, page 2)… my translation.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador dismissed the utility of meetings of global leaders, asserting that at the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, his program Sembrando Vida was taken as a [mere] proposal. He stressed that if you seek to protect the environment, “you have to make decisions and act, not make speeches. Those summits (COP26) already seem like those in Davos, where [world leader] go to state that the neoliberal model is going to save us after all.”.

In the Treasury room of the National Palace, he gave an resume of the COP26 conference and noted the ocontradictions. Caustically, he pointed out that, “It is no longer just Davos: now all these protecting the environment summits propose increaded oil production. They [world leaders] arrive in private planes. Europe was full of planes carrying presidents, and heads of state.”

Regarding the first agreement made at COP26, global reforestation, López Obrador argued “Are they going to recognize it as the most significant thing to come out of the meeting in Great Britian? A pledge to plant trees? What should make you angry is when you ask where the idea came from. From Sembrando Vida “.

The environment conference is a reason to demand action, because “Do you remember the Davos summits, [where] technocrats and neoliberals argued that structural reforms were the panacea, that the neoliberal model was going to save us? Now it is no longer Davos, now it is these summits, but at the same time the most powerful countries are increasing oil production, simultaneously holding these summits for the protection of the environment, to face climate change, They are proposing to increase production, oil extraction. ”

He put his finger on the sore of the neoliberal narrative he dismissed the conferees as “…like those so-called civic leaders, famous people who show up in their yachts to protect the vaquita (the highly endanged, nearly extinct dolphin found in the Sea of Cortez) . Do you know that, of all possible means of transport, the ones that pollute the most are boats? So, enough of hypocrisy and fashions, what you have to do is fight the monstrous inequality that exists in the world. ”

The man from Tabasco responded to his detractors: “There they are, right? Complaining that Mexico had not signed the reforestation program, when it was proposed by us. And he referred in general to the letter he sent to Joe Biden: “… proposing a strategy regarding the protection of the environment. Don’t let it go unnoticed that Mexico is the country in with the most comprehensive reforestation program. There is no other country in the world investing 1.3 billion dollars a year in reforestation, 1.3 billion dollars a year! “

Of course, reforestation alone is not the answer to the world’s climate problems. But it’s impossible to say that COP26 wasn’t an opportunity for mere posturing, for politicans and oligarchs to smek side-deals more to their own short term advantage than to the rest of us. And, too much of it was, in the immortal words of Greta Thunberg, “Blah, blah, blah”.