Elites Won’t Save the Planet — We Need a Mass Movement
At COP26 this week, some of the world’s biggest corporate polluters sent huge delegations to proclaim the need for climate action. They’re presenting themselves as the new climate saviors, but averting disaster won’t come from those who make a profit from killing the planet.
The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, UK on Novemenber 2, 2021. (Jonne Roriz / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Ever since 1995, the United Nations has staged regular climate summits, purportedly to facilitate cooperation between nations to limit emissions. Data from the Climate Investigations Centre shows that, at those events, the politicians have always been accompanied by a substantial corporate presence, with some big polluters sending delegations larger than entire nations.
In some ways, the twenty-sixth UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) simply represents more of the same. It is, after all, an event officially sponsored by Scottish Power, National Grid, SSE, Hitachi, Microsoft, NatWest, GSK, Reckitt, Unilever, and Sainsbury’s.
One of the main things that distinguishes this conference from those that have preceded it, however, is that this time far more corporations have come to the view that there is profit to be made in renewable energy. It’s on that basis that the former negotiator for Australia, Richie Merzian, approvingly called COP26 a “trade show” for climate change.
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