GOLDSTEIN: Despite 27 years of failure, UN’s climate change circus rolls on

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While global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and Europe scrambles to find adequate supplies of natural gas — a fossil fuel — for winter, the United Nations is poised to hold yet another of its tone-deaf global gabfests on climate change.

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From Nov. 6 to 18, 2,000 speakers and 35,000 participants are expected to pour into the tourist mecca of Sharm-el Sheikh in Egypt for what’s formally known as COP 27 — the 27th annual meeting of the UN’s Conference of the Parties, ostensibly to fight climate change.

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Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will lead the Canadian delegation on an issue that should be of no small concern to Canadian taxpayers, given that the Trudeau government has committed more than $100 billion to the cause to date.

At this year’s UN climate summit, developing countries will be making a major push for more financial reparations from developed nations like Canada, beyond the billions of dollars already committed, for the damage to their countries caused by climate change.

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Their argument is that the vast majority of emissions affecting climate change have historically come from developed nations.

In the real world, the UN’s top-down approach to addressing climate change is in shambles, marked by more than a quarter century of failures going back to the first COP conference in Berlin, Germany in 1995.

Global emissions have returned to record levels, after a brief decrease due to the economic slowdown caused by the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

This illustrates, yet again, that the only things that have ever reduced emissions — temporarily — are periods of global economic decline and recessions that have nothing to do with climate change policies.

A UN report released last week leading up to COP 27 says the world is heading for a catastrophic increase in average global temperatures of 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, compared to pre-industrial levels, blowing past what the UN considers the safe level of 1.5C to 2C.

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Even if all current commitments countries have made to reducing emissions are achieved — the Trudeau government’s targets are 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050 — “We are headed for a global catastrophe,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the wake of the report’s release.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated how pointless emission targets set by the UN during these annual carbon dioxide-spewing treks to the world’s vacation hotspots are.

Putin’s cut of natural gas exports to Europe in retaliation for western sanctions imposed on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, has sent prices soaring as winter approaches, increasing the demand for natural gas to heat homes.

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In addition, countries like Germany are firing up abandoned coal-powered energy plants — coal being the most carbon dioxide intensive fossil fuel when burned compared to natural gas which is the least intensive — to get through the winter with adequate supplies of electricity.

The UN’s approach to addressing climate change has become a textbook example of the definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

These annual global gabfests with their giant carbon footprints and with global celebrities flying in on private jets to be seen as caring about the planet, send out the worst possible message when it comes to addressing climate change — hypocrisy.

It’s time they were scrapped. Someone needs to tell the UN about video conferencing.

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