Those who have never been there cannot understand it. After a few days, participants in marathon conferences such as the Climate Change Conference (COP 30) in Belém, Brazil, fall into a kind of conference frenzy that makes them believe things that do not exist. For days and nights on end, participants pore over a text that, after a while, they believe to be the most important piece of writing ever penned. Nothing less than the salvation of the world can be expected from a mammoth global conference, of course, and many were convinced of its fundamental importance even before the conference frenzy began.

Last Friday, I saw an interview with the German State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Jochen Flasbarth,which really shocked me. He talked about how there is once again a fierce dispute over the final communiqué at this conference because a group of over 80 countries is once again trying to enshrine the phase-out of fossil fuels there against the will of fossil fuel producers. Flasbarth was not particularly optimistic, but he still hoped that there could be a ‘Dubai moment,’ as he called it, namely a formulation in which such a phase-out is at least addressed.

He was obviously referring to COP 28, where for the first time a sentence mentioning this critical issue was actually included in the final declaration (as explained here two years ago). The Handelsblatt writes that two years ago, a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels was agreed upon. That is utter nonsense. Even at the time, it was impossible to derive any glimmer of hope from this sentence from two years ago, and to interpret it today as a fundamental departure can only be explained by hallucinations. The sentence about the phase-out was insignificant then and is even more so today. Nothing has happened in the last two years that could lead a reasonable person to believe that the mere existence of such a sentence would get us even a millimetre further.

Now the conference is over, and this time not even that one sentence has been produced. Absolutely nothing has been produced that is truly relevant to the goals the conference was striving for. Anyone who does not pause now and ask themselves how we should proceed is a fool. In August 2021, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres accompanied the IPCC report published at the time with the words: ‘This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.’ Four years later, coal, gas and oil are being extracted as if nothing had happened, and the conference does not even mention it. If that is not a complete failure of a strategy, then nothing is.

Europeans spearheading irrationality

The Europeans are behaving particularly absurdly here too. They are puffing out their moral chests and ‘courageously’ confronting the oil and gas-producing countries. In Belém, they rallied some developing countries behind them (‘over 80 countries was the slogan’), but when it comes to their own interests and the question of how much financial compensation must be offered, especially to poorer oil-producing countries such as Nigeria, to prevent them from further extraction, then nothing more is heard from the Europeans.

If it were possible to actually find a phase-out strategy for fossil fuels, which would entail a rise in the price of these forms of energy, then redistribution from rich to poor domestically and internationally would be inevitable. But there is no mention of this from Europe’s political leaders either, because they fear it like the devil fears holy water. On the contrary, if there is any redistribution, it is from poor to rich, because those “pushing the economy forward” must be supported.

So everything that could be positive is a big European lie. They talk about tough strategies (TAFF, as they called what they were aiming for in terms of phasing out in Belem) that others should implement, but they themselves are not prepared to take risks and dip into their reserves. They expect countries with reserves of oil, coal and gas to stop exploiting them, but are neither prepared to compensate them for the lost revenue nor to accept the consequences of such a tough strategy for their own populations.

What happens next?

Basically, nothing happens. But of course, no one wants to admit that. So, we will continue to tinker around in a thousand different corners to ease our conscience. It doesn’t help, but it’s a great way to sell it to stupid voters as ‘our contribution’.

Many still take refuge in the cliché that ‘science’ tells us what we have to do. But climate science says nothing. It has no idea how to bring countries with completely different economic, social and cultural conditions to the table to discuss who can phase out fossil fuels, when and with what compensation from consumers.

This is the only issue that matters. To address it, a conference would have to be convened, under competent economic moderation, which would give itself ten years to develop a global plan that most producers and consumers could ultimately agree to. Sisyphus is nothing compared to this.

We also have to solve the even bigger problem that the north-western world has so far failed to provide the countries in the south and east with any serious assistance in overcoming poverty and backwardness because it is clinging with all its might to an absurd neoliberal economic model. Anyone who believes they can expect concessions from the developing world when they themselves are doing nothing to really help this part of the world catch up is not a fool, but an idiot.