COP is broken - but I’m going there anyway.
This article was originally released as an edition of my newsletter.
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Imagine you’re a climate activist, and on any particular day you can organise a protest quite spontaneously with a small group of friends which will attract international media attention, and will be seen by some of the most powerful people in the world when it comes to climate policy.
Thats’s the reality of COP. It’s what I experienced in Egypt, and in Glasgow, and it’s why I’m back this year - in Azerbaijan.
It is quite fashionable in the climate movement to denounce COP and call for others to boycott it. People point to many legitimate problems: it is overrun by fossil fuel lobbyists; it’s dominated by developed countries; it requires unanimity which means that they never agree anything meaningful. The list goes on. But none of this means that activists should not go there.
In fact, in my 11 years (christ, that long?) in politics and activism, I’m convinced that the most useful thing I have ever done is going to COP. And we need more activists there.
I’m going to explain this by picking apart some of the main arguments against attending COP, starting with my least-favourite graphic.
“But COP always fails.”
I cannot put into words how much I hate the graphic above.
You could put EVERYTHING humanity has been doing alongside that rise, and argue that it doesn’t work. We’ve been organising protests, yet emissions have risen. We’ve been building renewable energy capacity, yet emissions have risen. We’ve been having elections, yet emissions have risen.
When your teacher said “correlation does not mean causation”, this is what they meant.
So what? We just give up??
People place an unfair expectation on COP to solve everything. The reality is that we are in an uphill battle against the rich and powerful to win change, and it will take a hell of a lot to win. We’re not winning, so emissions keep rising. But if we are to win, then there is no doubt that COP will play a role.
There is no feasible route to lowering emissions that does not involve negotiations between governments.
“But even if they agree something, it’s not legally binding. Look at the Paris Agreement!”
This is a good point. The thing is the world is obsessed with “national sovereignty”, so they don’t want an international body of other countries to force them to do something (like stop burning fossil fuels).
As an anti-imperialist, I respect that. But as a climate activist, it is obviously an obstacle.
The best way to overcome this problem is to increase the power of the likes of the UN. This means advocating FOR, not against, international negotiation. Activists who say that COP is useless are actively undermining this, without (in most cases) proposing any alternative.
In short, COP is bad partly because it is not valued enough.
“But aren’t you endorsing it by being there.”
International negotiations do not rely on activist presence to be legitimised. In fact, the vast majority of international negotiations involve zero civil society. Today and tomorrow, the G20 will meet to discuss issues including climate change with nobody holding them to account, and with only a handful of countries represented.
We took 3 hours and 20 people to organise this protest, and it was on front pages around the world.
Now, there is a risk of allowing Azerbaijan to pretend it’s a democracy by organising protest there, while on the streets of the country civil society is facing widespread oppression that has escalated in the months running up to COP. That is why it is essential that the activists there call out the regime for what it is. It is more effective to protest against the regime than to silence ourselves. If this is not the case, why would Azerbaijan restrict the right to protest?
“Activists flying to a climate conference is hypocritical.”
Fair enough. I spend my dayjob telling people how bad flying is. Flying is so morally egregious to me that I refuse to visit my sister in the Philippines, or my beloved niece and nephew in Canada. But I flew to Baku.
The point is simply that 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists flew here. Every government flew here. Greenwashing companies flew here.
If we as activists don’t fly here then, we’re just handing the keys of our planet over to the most dangerous people in the world, and not doing anything to try to make sure they steer us in a sensible direction.
As a rule, activists do not change things by silencing and deplatforming themselves. Activists change things by being a pain in the ass. I’m under no illusion that by being at COP I will save the climate - this one conference is not going to do that. But I can, at least, be a pain in the ass. So that is what I will be.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
With love and solidarity from Baku,
Sean
Me at 5am in Egypt with negotiations over-running past the last day, listening to some very interesting speeches by world leaders.