The exhibition that was COP29

Storm Bert has already caused flooding, deaths and damage across the UK, throwing transport networks into confusion and prompting reminders from the Association of British Insurers that the country has experienced 11 named storms in 2023 alone. But this pales in comparison to the late autumn floods in Valencia which, as well as costing over 200 lives, are likely to cost Spanish insurers at least US$3.8 billion. Politicians whose first priority is the political cost to themselves might want to reflect on the protests and anger in Spain after the floods.

As well as reminders of what’s at stake, these separate crises were object lessons in how fragile our economies, societies and infrastructure actually are in the face of climate change.

Remember how much Covid-18 cost? And all that from a global crisis that inflicted next to no physical damage. With climate change, we have all the pandemic costs, plus the physical devastation of our built environments and systems, all of which underlines the sheer inappropriacy of the recent COP29. If some agreements were reached, all the better, but the temptation to posture and grandstand under the spotlights probably derailed just as many.

There were a great many temporary corridors set up with hoardings, heightening the unwelcome resemblance to a cattle drive, with states and organisations instead of farms in the stands. And any organiser can be forgiven shortcomings with such a huge event, but this impression says something about the event itself.

With so much at stake, so many lives and nations on the brink, are participating countries really supposed to be setting out their stalls like marketing exercises with, in at least a few cases, military junta leaders in full uniform plastered across their frontage? Then there were the gas industry and nuclear industry stands. All of which hardly inspires much faith in the process.

COP29 certainly was an exhibition – and that includes the most pejorative sense of the word. Good intentions and sincere goals were well balanced by folly and vanity. The plurality of nations only served to underline differences, with the hosts themselves busy throwing blame at other global constituencies.

In the long term, the earth’s ecosystem may be able to recover from human-inflicted climate damage – because by that time, self-inflicted damage will have wreaked so much devastation on human capacities to affect the environment, and on human populations as a whole, that it’ll take millennia for humans to be capable of such suicidal stupidity again.