Ummm ok then
Double fuck is probably the most appropriate term to use here
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Has anything useful ever come out of these COP conferences?
What does it actually stand for? Conference Of Procrastination?
To play the straight man, âConference of Partiesâ, as in parties to the treaty. At least some of the word parties is more appropriate in the other sense - I had an absolute blast in Bali in 2007.
There have been some useful outputs, but not for a long while to my mind. The process is fundamentally flawed, with every participant having a near-veto (consensus rule, until not long ago that was interpreted as a veto). My main criticism is that parties that are explicitly asked to do nothing (problem in itself) are given a say in the terms of what others must do. They cannot help but load it with other problems (often under the aegis of âclimate justiceâ). To me, it needs to be like the Montreal Framework, narrowly focused but with absolute reduction targets and required compliance.
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Just wondering, despite its weaknesses is COP the actual best vehicle to deliver a global response to climate change, or does that exist elsewhere?
The COP is probably the worst possible vehicle. It is also the only one we happen to have.
At one point, an alternative was on the cusp of emerging. I know it is not fashionable to say good things about Tony Blair in these parts, but Blair was acutely aware of the limitations of the COP process and cared deeply about climate change. He pushed a robust program to start a parallel process at the Gleneagles G8 summit, and had Bush on board to some degree. That died along with the other victims of the London bombing. Blair left the summit, and Gleneagles ended up doing very little for climate change.
It was supposed to be back on the agenda for the next year. A year later, Merkel was new and still deciding what she wanted to do, Harper had replaced Martin (Canada) and was emphatically against the idea where Martin had been a strong supporter. The only favourable shift was Prodi for Berlusconi in Italy, but he had been in office a matter of weeks, atop the usual shaky Italian coalition. Favourably disposed, but not actively so.
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Members of the Obama admin have spoken about their experience at previous COPs consisting primarily of ensuring that no two members from BRICS countries are ever allowed to be in a room together without a US representative present to stop them colluding on ways to sink the agreements the US were pursuing.
The US foreign service has an exceptionally high degree of self-regard for a country that has never actually been able to deliver an agreement on binding targets. The BRICS often have the same sentiment about the US.
My best memory from Bali was the terrified look on the faces of the Canadian delegation as they tried to explain where their minister was, when it was absolutely clear that they had no idea. There was absolutely no way he was going to be attending an 8am Ministersâ breakfast.
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Did he get lost in the maple syrup vault?
that sounds like some juicy gossip. spill those beans.
Suffice to say that Baird had a good time in Bali, but didnât see much daylight.
Minister Baird was seen leaving the side event venue, wearing flip flops, and members of the Climate Action Network Canada attending the negotiations in the plenary confirmed that Baird was no where to be seen, and that no pressing issues in need of a Ministers attendance were discussed during the meeting.
Absolutely classic. The NGO attendees had zero interest in hearing a business sales pitch.
Plasco was insolvent within a few years.
I noticed this story regarding Mars reverting to using paper wrappers.
There are quite a few manufacturers looking at things like this. We have a yellow recycling bin for plastic waste and it is noticeable that it isnât getting quite as full as it used to.
The flip side of this is whether it results in higher food waste. In terms of a Mars bar, thereâs so much sugar that I doubt it would be possible for it to go off.
Activists again with a legit message but doing stupid things. And kudos to the cameraman. 
Here in Northern France all waste collection was reorganised in January. Now, every type of plastic and all metals go into the yellow bin, all paper and cardboard must be kept separate and put manually into the paper and card bins that are located all around town (We have 2 different locations both within about a 1 minute walk) and glass also needs to be handled separately (not so close for us). Green bins (general waste) now makes up a tiny fraction of waste in our household as green is only for broken items, disposable nappies which doesnt apply to us, and things like wet wipes. There is a food waste bin but we donât use it as all our food waste goes to the chickens. Having to separate into 5 different bins is annoying, and having so much cardboard and glass needing to manually take to the bins is a regular event, but I think its heading in the right direction in terms of really minimising âblack bagâ waste.
For the most part it sounds very similar to the German system except they do collect cardboard and paper waste (which I assume is going up in quantity due to plastic alternatives and the increasing popularity of online deliveries).
We still have to take recyclable glass to the bottle banks which is a nuisance. The door to door collections are done by a single-crew refuse truck which operates using a robotic arm to empty the bins. I suppose the problem with glass is that if there is a mechanical failure with the collection it will cause a major hazard at the side of the road.
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Weâve had a similar sytem for a few years now. I just put all packaging in the same bag including glass. As glass is denser it falls to the bottom. Then once a week I hobble to the bins throw all the packaging into the ârecycle binâ, then the glass into that bin (only marmalade jars usually (the tops go into the packaging bin.
Thereâs a cardboard paper bin but that I donât use much itâs also a dying industry, much paper we use, envelops and the such, arenât recyclable due to the plastic 'added and who reads newspapers these days.
The rest goes for site burial as our incinerator was conform. The land fill is disgusting, on top of a hill where thereâs a supermarket and a southerly wind makes shopping very unpleasant.
For those naive enough to believe that electric vehicles are a key component of the solution to the climate crisis, think again:
Nickel: Supply Risks and ESG Issues.
The only solution is education: change how people think.
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I agree, we are not even doing the small things in our daily lives to change anything. We had a chat group in Singapore and some of them were complaining about our supermarkets finally going to charge for plastic bags and because of our unique living environment, we do use alot of plastic bags for other uses, so they started grumbling blah blah blah. I told them, nobody is asking you to change overnight. If the 5 mil people in Singapore just reduce 1 plastic bag per week, that will be 260mil bags saved annually. And yet such a simple thing and we are all grumbling.
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OK, I have a confession. I was completely misunderstanding what a Hydrogen vehicle was in all my posts in this thread. So we have Hydrogen combustion engines and Hydrogen fuel cells. The former produces Nitrogen oxide emissions (and is therefore not âgreenâ), while the latter produces water. But I didnât even realise Hydrogen fuel cell cars are effectively an EV, just much less efficient, due the energy loss on-board the vehicle to convert Hydrogen to electricity.
Therefore, there are very few positives for pushing Hydrogen. EVs are just far more efficient and humans really should just focus on advancing this avenue. There are so many studies online of this but I read through this one:
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