DAVID BUCKHAM: COP29 — a dangerous distraction to appease the Western conscience

On December 13 2022 the US department of energy announced that a major scientific breakthrough had been achieved at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The week before a controlled nuclear fusion experiment had, for the first time in history, achieved scientific energy break even, meaning it produced as much energy from fusion than the laser energy required to drive it.

“Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” stated US secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm when announcing the breakthrough. “This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero carbon abundance fusion energy powering our society.” 

The announcement ignited widespread excitement, with news headlines giving the public the impression that nuclear fusion had now become viable as a power source. The more nuanced reality — that while the reaction produced more energy than the reactor used to heat up the atomic nuclei, it had not generated more energy than the reactor’s total energy use — was widely unappreciated. In fact, for practical purposes, despite Granholm’s enthusiasm, nuclear fusion remains frustratingly unattainable. 

This was not the first time scientific facts had been distorted in the media though. In 2011 news outlets similarly declared that a team of scientists at Cern (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) had reported measurements showing subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light. The news was astonishing, not least because it appeared to undermine Einstein’s theory of special relativity, but investigations later revealed that the measurements had been skewed by faulty equipment. Defending himself upon resigning, the project manager, Antonio Ereditato, said: “In some quarters the message was excessively sensationalised and portrayed with not always justified simplification.” 

The problem of scientific misrepresentation was on my mind on a misty late October Sunday afternoon when I found myself sitting in a restaurant by the sea in Melkbosstrand, 20km from Cape Town, with a group of friends. Inadvertently we had come upon the topic of what I have repeatedly described as mass cognitive dissonance as it pertains to the moral hypocrisy of the UN Conference of Parties (COP).

Delegates have gathered for COP29 this week — in a petrostate totalitarian regime, for the third year in a row. The question was asked what difference it really makes, so long as the imminent threat of climate change is being actively fought against. I and another of my friends visibly rose from our seats with desperate conviction. She said: “It makes a huge difference — it’s about how you define the problem. You can’t find a solution if you can’t define the problem.” To which I exclaimed, “Exactly!” 

As an example, this year’s COP president-designate Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil company executive, has personally ensured that any mention of fossil fuels has been excluded from the official agenda. Just last week a leaked recording showed the CEO of COP29, Elnur Soltanov, who is also the Azerbaijani deputy energy minister, using his position to promote oil and gas deals between the state oil company and a potential investor, in exchange for COP29 sponsorship.

In the lead up to COP29 SA forestry, fisheries & environment minister Dion George called for at least a tenfold increase in the $100bn in annual climate finance that was pledged to developing countries by their developed counterparts in 2009. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plea for just $8.5bn at COP26 was at first committed to, but then went ignored, and was finally converted into contingent loans, not grants.

The resistance of the developed world to follow through on its climate change financing pledges adds to the long history of broken promises of assistance that have been made to impoverished countries. The silhouette of the African continent emblazoned on a stage background at Bob Geldof’s famous Live Aid concert in 1985 is a quintessential example of where the desire to appease the Western conscience eclipsed any true inclination to help, resulting in misguided intervention and ultimately disastrous outcomes. There have been waves upon waves of World Bank loans that have plunged poor nations into relentless debt cycles.

The so-called Green Revolution during the 1970s and ’80s promised to prevent mass starvation through the introduction of engineered crops and advanced agricultural products. Ultimately, it was precisely these that contributed to worsening the economies of the poorest nations, while Western-headquartered agribusinesses reaped substantial profits. 

What is really the problem with COP29? The answer seems obvious. It is inherently hypocritical, allowing the narrative to be manipulated to suit particular economic agendas. It undermines democracy. And far more insidiously, it undermines science itself. The allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars to using supercomputers to model the future outcomes of a range of climate change variables, such as temperature and wind speed in the year 2076, in the month of August in a particular grid space over Tanzania — as an example — seems, scientifically speaking, radically ambitious. And it is these models that lend scientific credibility to the policies invented under the auspices of the UN at events held in totalitarian petrostates.

Much of this argument will most likely be rendered mute when Donald Trump once again exits the Paris Agreement next year. In the meantime, Europe will begin in 2025 to outsource its conscience as it pertains to climate change by introducing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which in lay person’s terms will penalise the Global South for 200 years of carbon emissions committed by the Global North.

What is wrong with COP29 is that it is a dangerous distraction.

• Buckham is founder and president of Johannesburg-based international management consultancy Monocle Solutions.