COPing In

^{Official CoP26 logo: UK Government; Image, Illustration: Collectiver}

Please: no more plans, no more promises, no more nonsense, like 40-year plans from 4-year governments. COP in for a change, instead of copping out. Action please, now.

Glasgow hosts COP 26. Think about it: the 26th Conference of the Parties, talking climate change since 1994, and where are we now? Nowhere. Expect lots of parties, lots of prattle, and lots of polluting to get everyone there and back. How about progress?

COP can learn the message of COVID. When we are scared enough, we can do the unimaginable. How many more fires and floods will it take to scare us enough to act substantially on climate change? Is ridding ourselves of dirty coal and oil unimaginable? Is clearing the polluted air that kills more people than COVID, every year, unimaginable? Is challenging all the nonsense—now the frivolous forays into space—unimaginable? With all that pollution from their rockets, Bezos, Branson, and Musk should be castigated, not celebrated. Let’s celebrate Prince William, for calling them on this.

Dealing with climate change could be a lot easier than dealing with COVID. No need to shut down whole economies. Just shut down whatever continues to pollute heavily—much of it already gone as we have shifted to service economies. During COVID, the services took a hit; now they can offer us safer economic development.

No need to lock down either, except the lobbying that perpetrate global warming. And no need to continue masking our cowardice, and keeping our distance from the greed that is destroying us. It’s time to get gutsy. How about a million Greta’s for every major polluter, and millions more for every gutless government?

We need leaders in Glasgow, not followers who cop out yet again. How about this for COPing in? Announce a substantial action that you will take immediately upon returning home? Not a plan. Not a promise. A substantial action, now. Who would like to go first?

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© Henry Mintzberg 2021 with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, no rights reserved. 

For previous blogs about taking action on climate change, please see: The Next Step Greta…,  Saving the Planet from Governments and Mankets, The Biggest Joke in Climate Change, Coalescing around Climate.

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