To go or not to go? The question mark on the climate conference.

(And why – spoiler – in the end it is better to participate)

The new COP27 that began yesterday and until November 18 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt does not start with great optimism. The disappointing results of COP26 in Glasgow, the global energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with many countries in scattered order looking for fossil energy sources (in a global environmental crisis that would instead require renewable energy sources), and the absence from the negotiations of two macroscopic contributors to global emissions such as China and India are clouding the most optimistic hopes.

All this while the last eight years have been the hottest in history, the world population has reached eight billion and the Economist puts on the cover a tombstone on the alleged maximum 1.5 C of global average temperature increase that we should not have exceeded by the turn of the century (and we’re just past the first two decades).

Greta Thunberg said she will skip next month’s COP27 talks in Egypt, criticising the global summit as a forum for “greenwashing” (after participating in COP24-25-26). “The Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” she said [The Guardian]

A few days ago, she presented what we can already consider the new bible of climate change – The Climate Book – and which comes out fifty years from a fundamental text – Limits to Growth – by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III.

An anniversary that makes me think, fifty years is a lot, what is the progress we have made in the awareness and solving of the global crises we caused? Little or nothing, or rather, we are committed to worsening not only the concentration of emissions and therefore the increase in temperature, but also biodiversity (this is the new graphics inspired by the coloured stripes of annual temperatures), beside exceeding other planetary boundaries.

In short, now more than ever we need to roll up our sleeves for a dialogue that must necessarily be unlimited and, if the absent are always wrong, COP27 is still the institutional opportunity to be seized.

In this regard, I will be there, thanks to the call that as Living Future Europe we won to organize a workshop on the regenerative approach, within the Blue Zone (the core of the negotiations) within the UNFCCC Climate Action Hub program. And I also point out the round table organised by our partner My Green Lab on sustainability in the scientific environment and the road to decarbonise it. So, write down these two appointments, in chronological order:

Thursday 10^th November, 6 pm (UTC+2)

The Surprising Carbon Impact of Science: Progress on the UN Race to Zero

In collaboration with EARTHDAY.ORG Climate Education Hub, My Green Lab will bring a panel of industry experts to release a ground-breaking new report — a comprehensive profile of the carbon impact of the biotech & pharma industry. The report leverages data from 231 publicly listed companies and 151 privately held companies and compares that profile to other industry sectors.

Link to register to watch this panel live, feat. My Green Lab

Friday 11th November, 2 pm (UTC+2)

Living Futures: Storms or Starlight

Within the Climate Action Hub, this session will present a visionary pathway to living futures for the built environment and for those who live, work, and play within our buildings and cities, exploring what a regenerative built environment would look like. However, with the recognition that being regenerative is not just what we do, what we design and build, but who we are and who we will become, the session focuses on our regenerative self in addition to the regenerative organisations that collectively shape our built environment.

Link to watch it live, feat. Living Future Europe

In the meantime, I have much to read, to understand more and do my part. Have a good COP27 (hoping the red stripes fade).

The Limits to Growth [1972]

The price of progress: When each of us as an individual decides to buy something, we first consider the price. Yet society at large has long bought the idea of continual growth in population and production without adding up the final reckoning.

The Climate Book [2002]

The Climate Book shows that we all have the responsibility of being alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity, and that, together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.