This time of year is the green movement’s version of Christmas. For each of the last 30 years (bar one, during the lockdowns), the entire Green Blob has jumped onto the jet planes it claims to hate to assemble at a different hosting country’s largest possible conference centre. The Blobbists are joined by nearly all of the world’s governments, who try to work out the parameters of global agreements on emissions reduction. But this year’s COP meeting – COP29 – started in farce as the President of the hosting country, Ilham Aliyev, told the conference that oil and gas are a “gift from God”, according to the Daily Mail. The only bigger farce is the U.K.’s delegation.
To a cringe-inducing damp squib of applause, Starmer took the stage to announce that: “We’re building on our reputation as a climate leader with the U.K.’s 2035 NDC target to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% on 1990 levels.” And this echoes his statement at an earlier press conference, in which he stated that, “I think it’s very important for the United Kingdom to show leadership on the climate challenge”, and that, “It’s a very important challenge of our time”. But many have pointed out that Starmer’s hopes for global climate “leadership” have been thwarted by the likely absence of his opposites from the USA, the EU, China, India and Germany.
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