Thanks to Spoonermeme, I recently learned that Columbia’s mayor, Barbara Buffaloe has flown all the way to Dubai to attend the UN’s 28th climate change conference. As Spoonermeme pointed out, Columbia, Missouri is a city that can’t even figure out recycling but it is spending many thousands of dollars to send their mayor to a climate conference. (The flight alone is over 18 hours and costs over $3000.) Certainly, Barbara could stand to get some education regarding climate change; we know she’s seriously lacking because she got on the radio shortly after being elected and bragged about how the city’s sustainability office made no substantive changes to the city during her time running it. However, she is unlikely to receive any schooling from COP28 because the entire affair has been conquered by fossil fuel magnates.
I hate to ever say that conservatives were right, but I’m about to in just a minute.
If you are not familiar with Dubai, it is a city in the United Arab Emirates, which is located between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates’ oil and natural gas reserves are the world’s sixth and seventh-largest, respectively, but the UAE has also diversified into tourism, with Dubai specifically having become an international tourist destination. People go there to shop. It is a beautiful dystopia based on feeding the insatiable hungers of the world’s richest people.
For years, conservatives have been saying that environmentalism is a cover for globalism, and although they tend to be a tragically misinformed about the details, that is exactly what global elites wanted and with COP28, that dream appears to have bee fulfilled. Let me define a few words, though. The word “globalism” doesn’t mean a global Jewish/Satanic/communist conspiracy. The globalism is global capitalism, and the globalists are the very, very rich who have subverted democracy by decoupling themselves from the rule of nation states. These globalists are completely opposed to communism and while they may play at having deeper ideologies, their real ideology is domination through exorbitant wealth. They certainly use the language of the welfare state to justify their reign, but they never deliver on using the power of government to solve the problems of ordinary citizens.
The president of this year’s COP is Sultan al-Jaber, the chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), which pumped 2.7m barrels of oil a day in 2021, with plans to double that by 2027. The science of climate change is quite explicit about the fact that human survival depends on reducing the total output of carbon released immediately, and then going a step further to removing carbon from the atmosphere (a feat that no one currently knows how to accomplish in a way that results in net carbon reduction). In the context of the science, Adnoc’s plan to double production by 2027 is not only absurd but something beyond genocidal.
COP28 has the bigger carbon footprint than the previous 27 COP conferences owing to the fact that they invited a record 400,000 people to attend, including Columbia’s own fully useless mayor.
With COP28 having been taken over by the pro-fossil-fuel and pro-greed globalists, the heart of meaningful climate action has been conquered. Predictably, COP28 participants have pledged to increase the percentage of energy that comes from renewables without a hard commitment to reducing the production of fossil fuels. This fits perfectly with the track record of globalism which uses renewable energy as a way to facilitate economic growth (and greater profits) rather than as a replacement for carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Even if the ratio of renewables to carbon-based energy reached 99:1, the ratio means nothing if the absolute amount of carbon fuels burned has increased, yet this ratio is all neoliberal governments like the City of Columbia have to brag about, so that’s what they do.
Some governments who are attending COP28 plan to use nuclear power to offset use of coal and other fossil fuels to produce electricity. That’s fine now, but when the larger scheme of globalism falls apart and we no longer have the resources to maintain those reactors, they will become a significant hazard for the future, as will their significant waste materials.
So there we are are. Meaningful climate action has been conquered by capitalist globalism and clowns like Barbara Buffaloe have gone all the way to Dubai, mostly to shop because nothing else of substance is going to happen there.
Links Cited
Dubai is a Parody of the 21st Century (Adam Something; YouTube)
Spoonermeme post about Barbara Buffaloe and COP28 (Spoonermeme; Instagram)
(AUDIO): Columbia Mayor-Elect Barbara Buffaloe appears on 939 the Eagle’s “Wake Up Columbia”
Sultan al-Jaber: A quick guide to the COP28 president (BBC)
Top 5 Reasons Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS) Is Bogus (Peter Hart and Mark Schlosberg; Food and Water Watch)
Cop28 will have the biggest carbon footprint in the event’s history after UAE invited a record 400,000 people to attend (James Reynolds; Daily Mail)
Countries promise clean energy boost at COP28 to push out fossil fuels (Kate Abnett, Valerie Volcovici and David Stanway; Reuters)
What would happen if a nuclear reactor was suddenly abandoned (in a post-apocalyptic scenario)? (Caulley Johnson; Quora)
Long-term nuclear waste storage messages (Wikipedia)
UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’ (Frank Jordans and Seth Borenstein; Associated Press)
Survival of the Richest (Douglas Rushkoff; Medium)
Related: Bidenism and the End of the World