Getting Stellar into Belém
" We are riding a tiger. " Many of my friends are unfamiliar with the winding paths that lead to climate treaties like the Paris Agreement, and assume that the annual UN Conferences of the Parties, or COPs, if they have any worth at all, are like a trade convention. In many ways, they are. The conference venue is typically set at a large convention center in some global megalopolis—e.g., Le Bourget airfield near Paris, where Lindberg landed the Spirit of St Louis—and booked a year in advance. Cranes and cement trucks flood in, catering contracts are let, and the site is transformed into something resembling a World’s Fair, with pavilions, restaurants, and transnational corporations displaying their latest wares. In many ways, COPs are also playgrounds for dead dinosaurs. The fossil fuel industry had 1,700 delegates at COP29 Baku and 2,456 at COP28 Dubai. Both conferences were overseen by presidents who had worked for oil companies. Twelve of the COPs have bee...
