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GWYNNE DYER: Is there too much talk at COP 31 but not enough action?

Too much information just confuses the audience

It’s that time of year again, and the usual suspects are gathering for the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP 31) in the Turkish city of Antalya. Almost every country except the United States has a delegation there and there will be a great deal of talk about the changing climate, but not much will be done about it.

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This is more or less by design. If you wanted to create an organisation that really does things, you would not make membership open to every country and give every member a veto. Yet COP 31, like all the COPs before it, includes many countries that depend on fossil fuels for domestic energy, export income, or both.

The countries that openly accept the blame for blocking a consensus are usually those for whom oil and gas revenues are absolutely indispensable – places like Saudi Arabia and Russia – but a great many other countries tacitly support their blocking tactics. That is why it took 29 years (until 2023) for a COP to even mention “fossil fuels” in its final report.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the climate train has jumped the tracks. The careful calculations that enabled climate scientists to plot........

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