The Framework Convention Fails. Not Enough Nails.

The Glasgow climate summit, COP 26, or, as Prince Charles called it, our "Last Chance Saloon," has lived up to none of the hype. There'll be no Kumbaya moment. If anything it has shown the community of nations to be hopelessly divided in several ways, individually self-serving, mistrusting and often deceitful.

There'll be no herding these cats.

The big players, the Security Council of the climate emergency, have resorted to using their veto powers over what is going to happen, where and by when. There is no meaningful consensus among the major emitters. The EU, minus a couple of holdouts, is, or was, the most sincere. Russia was indifferent. China, well, it made gestural responses but it isn't giving up coal anytime soon and that '50 by 30' business, they'll get back to us on that. India has said some positive things but it's clining to coal and, remember, it was Modi doing the promising. 

Then there's the United States. I think Biden really gets it. He's a true believer. But his fossil energy lobby is a powerful adversary, particularly when married to a xenophobic Congress and a large percentage of the public who see this issue as a threat to 'America First.'

Adults should never quarrel in front of the children. It upsets them. When it comes to the big emitters they should not be airing their dirty linen in front of the  smaller, poorer and more vulnerable countries. It begins to sound like the countries responsible for getting us in this mess are leaving it up to the victims to shoulder an oversize burden. 

The Framework Convention is more than a quarter century old and it's showing its age.  Like an abandoned prairie barn, the wood is weathered but okay. The real problem is not enough nails.

Well, if we didn't get it right this year, we'll do better next year or a few years later. Eventually. Right?

Wrong. To make this convention work depends on a certain degree of stability and resolve among the member nations. The more countries that succumb to heatwaves, water shortages, food insecurity, migration or regional wars the less likely it is we'll achieve meaningful agreement on policies that accommodate the diversity of circumstances.

Remember, the clock is running down. We're nearly out of time. COP 26 was an opportunity we couldn't afford to squander. This past summer erased all doubt that the future has become our present. 

If consensus fails, if we abandon our final opportunity, then what? You enter a world that is more 'every man for himself.' There'll be no 'women  and children first.' It's a world where the issue of mitigation fades, eclipsed by a focus on adaptation. 

The powerful may fill the moat, raise the drawbridge and lower the portcullis.  They pray they have enough supplies to outlast the siege as the horde is finally devastated by plague and dysentery. 

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