Before we look at the recent headlines about Cop28, some big picture context is essential. The science has been telling us with absolute clarity, since before the first Cop in 1995, that the world needed to wean itself off fossil fuels.
We have now had a massive 28 international conferences on the climate emergency, increasing in scale from under 4,000 delegates in 1995 to over 97,000 this year, to try to get on top of the problem. I have colleagues who have never known a Cop-less world. Yet during that time, the rate at which we have been making the climate problem worse has risen steadily.
In fact, to the naked eye, there is no detectable evidence from the carbon curve that humans have noticed there could be an issue with climate change. In other words, aliens on another planet analysing carbon emissions data, would not be able to see that humans are trying to deal with a climate emergency.
