Fourteen years ago, on this day, June 15, 2009, the Grauniad tried to get everyone together in a room at a climate summit “Moving from awareness to action in tough economic times”
Sponsored by Shell. Obvs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that every man and their dog were talking about climate change – had been since the second half of 2006. And now the Copenhagen Climate Summit was going to be the icing on the cake. So of course, a quote left of centre, but actually centrist newspaper has to bring together the bien-peasants (sic) and business to show that it is a responsible corporate citizen. And there is lots of talk about technology and social change and expectations. Because there are reputations to be burnished and logs to be rolled and mutual back-scratching of various intensity. And how else do you know if you’re alive, unless you’re on one of these platforms being obediently listened to?
What I think we can learn from this
What we learn is that the cycle goes on, and that everyone has their stable place in the emotacycle and the corporate emotacycle. But no one asks question “Gee, what have we been doing wrong?”
What happened next
Copenhagen was predictable and predicted catastrophe. But everyone keeps on same day.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.