In order for climate talks to succeed, organizers must ban the fossil fuel industry—the fossils—from all future climate conferences starting with COP 26 (Conference of the Parties) in November 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland. Click on button below and say “I Agree”.
Ban the Fossils from Climate Talks
COP 26 needs to be a world changer. “The conference is seen as a major crossroads in the battle against global climate change and comes in the year governments are due to review their commitment to cutting carbon emissions,” reports Scotland’s The National.
The World Needs Fossil-Free Climate Talks
They are allowed a seat at the table and have used this to thwart progress to pursue their own vested interest against the public good. The UN climate change process should ban the fossil fuel industry, the same way the World Health Organisation has excluded the tobacco industry. — Stuart McWilliam, Global Witness
Previous summits going back decades —including COP 25 (Madrid) — have been supported financially by sponsorship deals from the fossil fuel industry. And it’s not unusual for the fossils to actually have a spot at the negotiating table. “Company representatives are often invited by governments to join their delegation and allowed to hold side events during the summit,” reports The National.
Why even the Paris Agreement (COP 21) “was guided to its inevitable conclusion by the veiled hand of Big Oil and its corporate and political allies,” writes Donald Gutstein in The Big Stall. According to Gutstein, Big Oil got its deal in Paris. The Agreement is weak lacking in both ambition and any means of enforcement—exactly what the fossils wanted.
Nothing in the Agreement is obligatory, prompting ecological economist Clive Splash to call it “a fantasy which lacks any actual plan to achieve the targets for emissions reduction…no mentions of greenhouse gas sources, not a single comment on fossil fuel use, nothing about how to stop the expansion of fracking, shale oil or explorations for gas and oil in the Arctic and Antarctic.”
In the euphoria following the approval of the agreement in Paris in 2015, many media outlets, climate experts and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) proclaimed victory calling it the beginning of the end for fossil fuels. But then, the fossil fuel industry got to work and doubled down.
Always Set Up to Fail
There have been four COPs since the Paris Agreement (COP21) and all have failed to move the climate action needle forward. Commenting on the recent COP25 failure in Madrid, Dr. Peter Carter (Director of Climate Emergency Institute and an IPCC expert reviewer) shared these observations during a video interview.
He called COP25 “yet another circus…it’s another delay. — Dr. Peter Carter
“Oh, it’s always been set up to fail….the first two COPs were pretty successful and ever since then things have gone down down down…it just takes a couple of countries to be able to veto any major decision…it is unbelievable what these high-emitting fossil fuel producing countries are doing.” And this is so because of the “consensus” approach adopted for COPs including COP21 which produced the Paris Agreement in 2015. Peter Carter is also the co-author of Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival.
Year after year major oil-producing countries such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others are blocking the science from the negotiations that are necessary to achieve solid climate success. Mitchell Beer, curator for The Energy Mix, reports that “there was no doubt that fossil interests are still by far the dominant corporate voice.” “They are inside government writing the rules,” Greenpeace International Executive Director and COP veteran Jennifer Morgan said of the business representatives following the meeting.
“Big polluters and the countries most historically responsible for the climate crisis have been able to ruthlessly advance the fossil fuel industry’s profit agenda over our collective futures,” said Catherine Abreu in Madrid.
Ban the Fossils from Climate Talks
We have a global climate emergency. Climate talks are failing. We don’t have time to wait any longer. We are failing our children and grandchildren.
The Fossils should not be a major player in climate talks. They should not be at the negotiating table. Governments hosting climate conferences should not seek nor accept sponsorship deals from the Fossils. Their goal is to slow down and block action on the climate.
The goal of the Agreement is to decrease greenhouse gases and hold the warming of the planet to well below 2C. But that isn’t happening five years later nor will it ever happen as long as the Fossils control the process.
The World Needs a Fossil-Free COP 26 in Glasgow. It starts with this petition to the United Nations. Click on the button below, and then click on “I agree”.
Ban the Fossils from Climate Talks
Related articles:
The Derailment of Climate Talks by Polluters
Where Was The Urgency At COP25?
The Only Thing More Disastrous Than COP25 Negotiations Is Global Climate
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Comment from Doug Grandt on Facebook
Rolly, with all due respect, I wholeheartedly disagree with this proposal. Rather than vilify and cut off communications with the oil & gas industry, we need to take the reins and control them, command them to submit their most expedient endgame plans to wind down production and refining operations in a predictable, managed decline to their necessary demise, while funding 100% of their “final expenses” for dismantling and detoxifying oil refineries, oil field processing facilities, abandoned oil and gas wells, pipelines, LNG facilities and terminals, and dis-allowing any further exploration or expansion of any sort, dis-allowing any further dividend distributions, dis-allowing any further stock options or deferred compensation and requiring them to buy-back all outstanding shares (aka market capitalization) over the predicted remaining life of each corporation at a fixed share price and dis-allowing bankruptcy in order to avert panic sell-off of shares and the collapse that such a panic would cause in the markets and in the economy.
Kicking fossils out will perpetuate unfettered laissez-fair control by the CEOs and Boards of Directors whose only motive is to increase their own personal wealth. They will not respond to any internal personal morality, so we must put a leash on them and enforce their own best endgame in the interest of a so-called just transition. To do otherwise will never result in a truly just transition.
Their invitation to Glasgow must include a caveat that they come with a complete set of plausible scenarios covering a range of variables using their business planning models, testing the sensitivity to the logistical and financial assumptions, challenges and conundrums.
My thoughts on this were published in three VT news papers:
Bit.ly/Reform3July19
Bit.ly/VTDig7July19
Bit.ly/Commons24July19ment from Doug Grandt
Rolly Montpellier – Thanks for this perspective Doug. I must ask if you really believe the Fossils will change the obstructionist behaviour they’ve been practicing since the beginning of time back in Copenhagen. I would be all in if we could get them to agree to do just half or even a quarter of the great ideas you bring forward. I’m skeptical that can happen in time.
At least if they’re not at the discussion table causing havoc and slowing down the process, world climate policy will move forward with or without them.
I especially like your last paragraph – “Their invitation to Glasgow must include a caveat that they come with a complete set of plausible scenarios covering a range of variables using their business planning models, testing the sensitivity to the logistical and financial assumptions, challenges and conundrums”
Doug Grandt – Rolly I mean precisely what I wrote: “we need to take the reins and control them.
“Their invitation to Glasgow must include a caveat that they come with a complete set of plausible scenarios.”
Manage
Rolly Montpellier – I’m starting to like your proposal. Perhaps that’s another campaign. It’s more solution-driven than banning them. That said, years ago the WHO banned the tobacco industry from attending its events. And also all sponsorships.
Doug Grandt – it will require unprecedented pressure on MPs and Congress to legislate hearings to demand Oil&Gas submit to Citizen directives to create responsible endgame plans.
What do we heave now? Unbridled laissez-faire and ultimately bankruptcies, market and economic collapse, and social mayhem waiting in the wings.
Who knows best how to address the logistical and financial challenges and conundrums we’ll face deciding which refineries and which oils fields to shut down first and the next and the next while not allowing any to file bankruptcy as their profits begin to diminish in the face of debt default, insolvency, curtailing dividends (which should be ceased) and investor panic sell-off?
We the People must set the crashing glide path and the rules, and the iCEOs must implement. Zero tolerance.
Lest we take control, Boards of Directors will exercise fiduciary duty to protect the interest of investors, Officers, Board members and employees, not the Public or National Interest.
If we vilify we’ll die. Better to ally and take the reins.
Doug – I’ve considered your response to the Ban The Fossils campaign. You raise the valid concern that it’s better to have the fossils at the table than banishing them completely. You also stipulate that they should only be participants as long as they come to the talks with concrete solutions to the climate crisis. But will they. My answer is NO they will not. When I see this kind of response from the retiring CEO of BP, I know without any doubt that the fossils are not part of the solution — he cautions the fossil fuel industry against moving too quickly to counter the climate crisis. I’m stepping up my actions to Ban The Fossils and appealing to a much broader audience with a video on the We Dont Have Time platform. I’m asking for support. Please use the #BanTheFossils in your climate actions.
Thank you for your feedback and for being a CCL colleague.