Cop26 and G20 are just a spectacle: do we know how much carbon they produced?

Here we go again: After a short break due to COVID, the big political theater resumes, complete with cocktails, dinner and group photos, all strictly without masks,

This time, however, the absurdity of the skit is clear: against the backdrop of the climate crisis that threatens to extinguish our species in the not too distant future, we meet in Rome. G-20 and in Glasgow, soon thereafter, for cop26, The airliners, private jets and state planes on which the government travels with aides and the press flew to Rome and then to Glasgow before returning to their continent and nation. All COP26 participants joined this important group, many of whom arrived on one of the 400 private jets that sabotaged Glasgow airport. Do we have any idea of ​​how much CO2 the meeting in Rome and Glasgow produced?

Incidentally, it is impossible to find the answer, on this aspect no one bothered to calculate, even very, very approximate. Nevertheless, we must start seriously talking about climate change from this waste.

A never-discussed aspect of the climate problem is political marketing at home and abroad: it consumes a lot of carbon. Joe Biden He landed in Rome with his Air Force One loaded with journalists and support administration, including those carrying nuclear briefcases, who accompanies him everywhere. All these people left with a caravan of 85 cars, mostly SUVs, and from the pictures they don’t look like electric cars but like petrol or diesel. Consistently with this bundle of carbon, Biden went to the Pope to bless him for whatever he would do to save humanity from climate catastrophe. And perhaps His Holiness even blessed them for it!

Meanwhile, at his home, the US president has allowed coal producers to continue extracting fossils as long as they capture the CO2 emissions they produce. But which ones? Those related to extraction or all, including those produced by consumption? As usual, these details are not mentioned. Nor do Americans know that there is currently no applicable technology for capturing CO2 emitted from coal production in the US that is well tested and that works. green promotion, Therefore. The truth is quite different: in the face of the energy crisis The cessation of coal use will be postponed and it’s a shame It would hide with a fig leaf the “capture” of its deadly gases.,

Before leaving, Biden announced $1.75 trillion spending program For green energy and anti-pollution projects which he wants Congress to vote for. The cost is $555 billion that would be produced by typing a few keys on a US Treasury keyboard, as is the practice now, but this technique is also never mentioned and Americans Confident Their Taxes Will Pay for the Green Conversion, With this announcement Biden flew to Europe without worrying about the carbon trail he left behind.

Because G20 and Cop26 didn’t happen in the same place To keep a carbon footprint? It would have been an important gesture to the world. but one mario dragio And for those who support him on both sides of the Atlantic, it was convenient to picture his fellow political leaders in front of the Trevi fountain in the center and no longer side by side with central bankers. G20 in Rome, which produced nothing, A neutral release where there is no commitment to do anything, served to approve the political status of the former coach, who is now a political figure. Italians love this image and the rest of the world loves it. The political marketing campaign worked great, the cost was high in terms of carbon emissions, but it didn’t matter: nobody noticed.

You can go on to list the marketing policies of other politicians. boris johnson a glasgow Emmanuel Macron, who has returned home after circling Scotland, but it’s not worth it. most important is the absence of Vladimir Putin and of Xi Jinping, respectively, a huge producer and consumer of fossil energy by both the G20 and COP26: without them reaching an agreement would have no value.

If we continue like this, ignore evidence, dining on political marketing hype and rejoicing that the climate is exacerbating this big CO2 nuisance, then maybe we deserve climate change!