Off to COP29 (with our tails between our legs)

The big annual United Nations climate change conference — COP — began this week in in Baku, Azerbaijan. I’ll be attending the second week with CCOP (the Christian Climate Observers Program) with about 30 other people from all over the world. Last year I went with the group to Dubai for COP28 and had a remarkable experience. I wrote about many aspects of it in this newsletter, including what a COP is, the hypocrisy of flying to a climate change conference, and quite a few other posts about the outcomes of the conference itself.

Given the election results in the US, it is safe to say that we Americans at the COP are not going to be the most popular kids at the dance. I’m aware that not all voters for Trump were intentionally thumbing their noses at responsible climate action (though some certainly were), but unintentionally that has been the consequence. Trump used to call climate change a “hoax invented by China” but more recently (in the wake of Hurricane Helene destruction) he shifted to calling it a scam, “It’s one of the greatest scams of all time… people aren’t buying it any more.” And he routinely mocks the science by saying things like, “the oceans in 500 years will raise a quarter of an inch” and “You know, they have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s weather.”

Of course he says a bunch of ridiculous things and we’ve learned not to take him literally. But too many people (about 50.2% of of US voters) have taken him seriously enough not to worry about what his election will do to the future livability of the planet for our kids and grandkids.

Conservatives pride themselves on wanting to keep things the same or only change very slowly, but it is hard to imagine a greater threat to our way of life than climate change. For those of us in privileged positions, most of that change is a decade or two in the future. For many others around the world, it is happening today. You think immigration is a problem now? Wait until the 100 million Bangladeshis have no place to live (because the seas will rise more than a quarter of an inch) and people along the equator can no longer grow food. It’s not hard to find accurate and vetted scientific information at places like climatecentral.org and NASA.

The question is: do we care?

The Christian Climate Observers Program exists to show the world that there are still Christians who care. I’m off to Baku on Thursday (though it takes a couple of days to get there) to say that I care. I’ll write about the experiences here most days, and I hope it is not all gloom and doom (I usually have some funny adventures on such trips!). If you know others who might be interested, here is a link to send them to subscribe to this newsletter (don’t worry, it’s free).

I’ll leave you today with some words from John Podesta’s comments at the COP29 opening. He’s the president’s Senior Advisor for International Climate Policy, reflecting on the changes in store for United States climate policy:

As President Biden said in the Rose Garden last week, setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.

This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet.

Facts are still facts. Science is still science.

This fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle, in one country. This fight is bigger still.

July 22^nd was the hottest day in recorded history. The consequences of living on a rapidly warming planet are all around us—and not just in collapsing coral reefs and melting ice sheets.

It’s had devastating impacts on people’s lives. This fall, Hurricanes Helene and Milton slammed into the southeastern United States, killing hundreds and cutting off power and water in communities for weeks.

The worst drought in decades in southern Africa is putting 20 million children at risk of malnutrition and even starvation.

Wildfires and drought are ravaging the Amazon and the Pantanal, destroying Indigenous communities and burning up an area the size of Switzerland.

Catastrophic floods in Spain just two weeks ago poured a year’s worth of rain in a single day.

In Asia, in September, supercharged Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds and caused $16 billion in damages from the Philippines to Myanmar.

None of this is a hoax. It is real. It’s a matter of life and death.