The Case For Boycotting COP Meetings

It is evident that COP meetings aren’t bearing any fruit, and their track record has not been very promising so far. It is expected that COP 28 will be, at best, no different, if not less inclusive and less genuine.

Activists have been denouncing these meetings and dismissing them as ‘PR events’, and rightfully so; because after 27 iterations of these sham meetings, we’re still not on track to stay under 1.5 C of warming to preserve and safeguard posterity’s future. But, we have missed one crucial component or aspect of COP meetings: US

We complain about how these meetings are simply a farcical travesty, instigated and organised by the unscrupulous elite ruling class; the very same cohort that is threatening our future. It is evident that continuing to suck up to them by attending these meetings is undermining our rightfully scornful words, and is causing us to lose our credibility towards, as well as influence over, the very participants of those meetings.

Our actions -attending these meetings- are not aligned with what we say. Denigrating and dismissing COP meetings as “PR events” and then going there to attend them is shockingly oxymoronic, perhaps even, hypocritical. And the mere act of attending COP meetings is greatly antithetical to what we say about them. We have to make sure that we align our actions with our words.

We ought to ask ourselves, after all this spurning of COP meetings, and eloquent statements derogating and decrying their very worthiness and genuineness, if activists are still going to these meetings, what message does this send to politicians? I am not qualified to provide an answer to that question, but the message sent sure as heck isn’t that we ‘distrust or disbelieve’ in COP meetings. It simply doesn’t work that way.

Before we start lecturing politicians and the adult populace on aligning their actions with their words, and halting this ‘cognitive dissonance’ that they’re clearly manifesting, we need to first look inwards upon ourselves and come to the realisation that we’re not practising what we preach.

There’s a wise saying “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world; today I am wise, so I’m changing myself.” For change, comes from within.

If we truly don’t believe in COP meetings, we should clearly show this in our actions, or this time, lack thereof; in other words, instead of giving these pesky politicians what they want i.e. activists partaking in their meetings and thereby bestowing credibility on those meetings, we should stop attending meetings we don’t believe in.

Simply put, to officially, and by all parties within the climate movement, boycott COP meetings, at least until they deliver on their promises and act on the level and with the commensurate sense of urgency that is warranted and desperately needed by the scale of the climate crisis. As the saying goes “Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.”

Let's now make sure that we deprive those clowns of their audience.

P.S.: The case made here is very akin to the one made here by vega the cow and climate healers:

https://climatehealers.org/blog/why-vega-the-cow-and-climate-healers-are-boycotting-cop27/