AT PENPOINT
The urgency of COP29 coming to decisions it did not, can be seen in the backdrop of a science fiction novel, The Burning World by J.G. Ballard, first published in 1964, exactly 60 years ago this year.
A cursory reading of the novel shows that the world has certainly not reached the situation it depicts, but it does show how, in one part of the world, the sort of change that would occur. The premise of the novel is deceptively simple: that it has stopped raining. This, according to the novel, has occurred because a layer of microplastics has formed on the surfaces of the oceans, and the water cycle, which needs ocean evaporation, has been interrupted.
Ballard is a British author, and thus shows the effect on a community in the British countryside, inland, but along the banks of a river. One of the effects is the breakdown of law and order, another is how people flee to the seashore (with horrific experiences on the way), and their struggles to survive involving the development of new power structures to replace the old ones.
Indeed, that was one of the themes of COP29, as the developed West tried to twist climate finance in ways that would maintain their existing dominance, while the underdeveloped countries tried to use the climate change crisis to get out from under existing burdens.
Ballard was no longer a novice when he wrote The Burning World, but was still to reach the great heights he did when considering a post-nuclear world, which was perhaps a greater concern at the time, but did explore how humanity itself would be devastated. That devastation should have been visible at the COP29 Summit, but perhaps was less visible there than lobbyists from the oil industry.
Technically speaking, this was the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The debate seems to have shifted from how much should countries reduce their emissions to how much money they should put up to repair the damage that is being done. However, the debate on whether the climate is changing is still on. Climate change denial is legal, and while it is probably accepted with equanimity as a foible when Donald Trump proclaims it a hoax, and declares it is a Chinese conspiracy to stop America becoming great again. Holocaust denial is a criminal offence in several European counties and Canada, but not the USA. But catch Trump denying the Holocaust!
Because the US government is going to be in denial, the Paris Accord of 2016, at COP21, is in danger, because the USA had initially signed, then pulled out under Trump in 2017, and returned in 2021 under Biden, and may well pull out again after Trump takes over. The USA, China and Europe must agree to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, because that is what is driving climate change. The industrialized nations want not to curb emissions so they can grow further, and several industrialising countries, among them India and Pakistan, also dislike what some see as curbs on their development.
The problem the world faces is that a globe of nation-states cannot solve this problem. Pretending the problem doesn’t exist is also unhelpful. COP29, and ll the COPs down the line will also be, because national interests are now clashing with global. And woe betide the national government which places global interest first
COP 28 and 29 have been held in oil countries. Dubai is the capital of the UAE, and Baku, the present host, is that of Azerbaijan. Its oilfields are older than Dubai’s, being the subject of intense fighting in World War II, with their capture one of the main German operations when it launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The next COP is to be held in Belem, Brazil. Belem is right across the country, which is huge, from the oil-producing areas of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, but does not totally conceal the fact that Brazil is one of the largest oil producers in the world, and though the country does not export much, it is self-sufficient. Belem is the headquarters of Belem Bioenergie, which was into biofuels. So while the next COP will be held in a major world oil producer, it will be away from the national oil industry.
One of the aspects of the crisis that is not stressed enough is that it is not going to affect only developing countries. This is something that Ballard managed to make evident in The Burning World, which was set in the UK, in a quintessentially English setting. It did not show the UK as suffering because of the failure of Third-World-based supply chains, but very directly, because of the lack of water it was experiencing. Britain without rain? Horror, surely, more than science fiction!
It is possible to argue that this has not happened, but that is to miss the point of science fiction. It is an attempt to look into the future; and another name for it is ‘speculative fiction’. However, this reflects the irrefutable fact that climate change will not affect the Third World and miraculously leave the developed countries alone. Perhaps that is the principle reason for change denial: white privilege will not work on it.
T.S. Eliot is not thought of as an environmentalist poet, but he seems to have shown the normal poet’s concern with the environment. His famous poem The Wasteland begins thus: Ápril is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire. stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain. Though often seen as his gesture to Chaucer, who began his Prologue to The Canterbury Tales: ‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote/ The drought of March hath perced to the roote’, it could well be the start of an environmentalist anthem. Yet Eliot may have had the last word, in his poem The Hollow Men, which ends thus: This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but whimper.’ We are not awaiting an extinction event like the meteor crash that may have killed off the dinosaurs, nor a nuclear winter set off by nuclear exchange.
Instead we face a worsening of what happens. After record floods in 2023, Punjab is living through horrible smog? Ballard in A Burning World looked at just one of the milliard scenarios. The world has sufficient energy to summon regular meetings, but instead of a solution we debate about money.
The late historian Arnold J. Toynbee postulated that societies looked to minorities to solve problems. If they were creative minorities, they solved problems. In this day and age, the West constitutes the creative minority for the entire world. How do we rule ourselves? By democracy (or some battered version thereof), How do we run our economies? By capitalism (free markets, stock exchanges, and so on). So how can the environmental problem be tackled? Is the West up to it?
If a creative minority ceases to solve problems, it doesn’t just give up all its power and perks. It becomes a dominant minority, one which devotes increasing efforts to perpetuating itself. If this has happened to the West, then there are two alternatives. One is that the entire world (including the West) will collapse. The other is that it will be replaced by another power, another minority, but a creative one, one able to solve the problem of environmental degradation, not merely a dominant one.
The problem the world faces is that a globe of nation-states cannot solve this problem. Pretending the problem doesn’t exist is also unhelpful. COP29, and all the COPs down the line will also be, because national interests are now clashing with global. And woe betide the national government which places global interests first.
