In the beginning, it was part of finding creative means to mend our wasteful industrial ways and treat God’s gift of the world with love and respect. Yet long ago it became just another greed fest for false prophets of catastrophism and the princelings of the UN and NGO envirocracy to strut and virtue signal across another creaking global stage.
Far from actually addressing the concerns articulated so powerfully by Pope Francis seven years ago in his brilliant encyclical Laudato Si’, the recently concluded 27th iteration of this festival of folly only deepened cynicism about “care for our common home” becoming an embarrassing pretext for 35,000 attendees to purloin free food, drink and travel points.
The Canadian delegation alone comprised 335 members schlepped at primarily public expense to Egypt with Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, who climbed down from his tower long enough to wave the flag and accomplish…well…we’ll have to wait to know for sure. No wonder 21-year-old Development and Peace activist Yusra Shafi expressed “frustration” to The Catholic Register about being there as part of Canada’s contingent with so little to show for the experience.
“I haven’t really seen a lot of decisions being made so far,” the U of T psychology student told us.
Shafi deserves full marks for honesty, though before arrival at the Sharm El Sheikh conference site someone with integrity should have let her know the real business of the COP crowd is self-serving shakedowns, not meaningful decision-making. Those who want to get things done don’t fly tens of thousands of people around the world for a two-week meeting. They make things move within limited circles of decisive action.
Decisive action against climate change — or any other environmental assault on our common home — is precisely what did not — and does not — come out of glorified cocktail party conflabs such as COP27. As the Wall Street Journal noted acidly in its editorial appraisal of the 2022 event, even the much-ballyhooed agreement on a new fund for wealthier countries to pay climate-damage reparations to poorer countries is less shine than shinola. For starters, the agreement utterly leaves out China, which emits two-thirds more CO2 than the U.S. and Europe combined. More, 60 per cent of China’s power generation is coal-driven, and the Middle Kingdom’s Communist government has approved more coal generating plants through 2025 alone than the U.S. has in its history. Worst of all, there is nothing in the agreement about how the reparations will be assessed, much less enforced. Cue battalions of rapacious lawyers storming the feed troughs of the world.
Our first parents taught us the greedy impulse. Forget the glorious home God created for us, which it is our duty to Him to preserve. Instead, hey, there’s the apple: Cop it before it falls.