We irregularly feature the work of Denise Baden in our blogs and other output (see here and here). Denise is Professor of Sustainable Practice at the University of Southampton with a particular interest and expertise in climate fiction. In a recent post on her website, she reflects on her time at COP28, and we share part of this here. As ever with our blogs, what is written are not necessarily the views of the Association.
Denise begins:
What does a sustainability professor and climate fiction author make of COP28? Before I even arrived, there were accusations of COP28 as being a giant greenwashing exercise, with the President of COP28 being at the same time CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. His comments casting doubt on the necessity to phase out fossil fuels didn’t help to reassure the critics.
My own experience indicated there was little in the way of ‘walking the talk’. The climate conference event at the University of Dubai provided small plastic bottles of water for every delegate rather than jugs. The climate-leader after-party served beef. At COP28 itself, there were places to fill water bottles, but they weren’t advertised, and many weren’t aware of them and bought water in plastic bottles, contributing to plastic waste for the planet. The apartment where I stayed had no facilities to recycle waste – not even a separate place for food waste or glass. Dubai itself is a place of excess and rampant consumerism. A few years ago I might have been excited by the lights and bling everywhere you go. But now I’ve joined the dots between the lifestyle it sells and the planetary consequences of that, it just makes me want to cry.
The Blue Zone is for the government officials negotiating policies and targets and investments. I spent most of my time in the adjacent Green Zone. You need a pass to enter, but it is more accessible to a wider group of people. It was an odd mix of engineers with innovative projects waiting for funds, start-ups with inventive solutions looking for money to scale up, industrialists searching for business, who seem to have no green credentials at all, finance folk specialising in ESG investments, traders in carbon credits, NGOs, campaigners, and educators.
COPs have also been criticised for the carbon emissions created by thousands of long-haul flights to get there and some claim that Zoom meetings would be preferable. I worried about this myself. Last year I gave several virtual talks at COP27, but my first in-person attendance has convinced me of the value of meeting physically. Everyone I found myself next to, whether in the metro going back, or at lunch, was in the climate game and had useful insights to share, enabling me to cross check points made by others to see which ideas stand scrutiny.
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Towards the end of the long post, Denise writes:
This is my overall impression – the division between those who understand that no amount of pledges and talk will change the fact that an iceberg will melt at plus zero degrees, and those who don’t. The former are battling climate anxiety and are desperate for action. The latter see business opportunities and think the former are naïve, for not understanding the political realities. Some agree with the COP28 President. ‘How will we function if we don’t have enough energy?’ one businessman asked me. He clearly thought anyone who said we should phase out fossil fuels rather than phase down was an idiot. To me it’s obvious that chemical realities are less negotiable than political realities, so we’d better find a lifestyle that means we can live within the energy provided by renewables rather than expecting to carry on as we are.
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And this is how the post ends:
I attended COP28 not only to promote the Green Stories project and climate fiction publications, but also to learn. I teach sustainable business and need to stay up to date. We all do because there is no magic bullet. Whether you are a policy maker, a finance company seeking to invest, a business pursuing climate solutions, an educator, campaigner, or climate fiction writer, you should ensure you are up to date with what’s been tried, what’s working and what isn’t. Many ideas that sound great in practice solve one problem by creating another. Some won’t work or will only work with trial and error and huge investment. But there is no option – we have to struggle on and find a way to sort the wheat from the chaff. See where the bottle necks are and how we can best to address these. Learning by doing. We don’t have time to waste by waiting for the perfect solution, but we can’t afford to waste time on dead ends. But if we only go for the safe bets, we won’t make it either. To quote a recent film, we need everything everywhere all at once.
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We do recommend you read all of it on Denise’s website. Denise can be contacted at: D.A.BADEN@soton.ac.uk