It will be COP15 in a few hours. Impossible not to have heard of it. And as for the cows that jumped the fence in Mauricie, the two events make you smile.
Three weeks ago it was COP27. No anachronism here, even if 15 comes after 27, everything is normal from form to content: difficult to find your way around these meetings and their pious wishes. To speak of a fable to describe this series of lectures would be more accurate.
Recently, in the forest, I was surrounded by a pack of wolves (in my phone: a video, with the howls). With impressive natural finesse and intelligence, the wolves cornered me. On my left a ravine; impossible to escape there. The first animal appeared head-on, a hundred yards through the trees. A female wolf. She got close enough for me to see it was a lady. I was sitting on the ground hunting big game with a traditional bow. The wolves having first considered that I was prey.
Got up, and I said softly, “Hello, what are you doing here? We looked at each other, her and me, the time to take out my phone. And then the wolf howled. Then another cry on my right answered him. Then two more still behind. I saw four wolves this October morning. Wolves who then joined others 300 meters away. A pack. And all these beautiful people roared together. I remained silent listening to them. With a huge smile.
Cry wolf. It comes from a fable from antiquity repeated here and there for almost three millennia. I love these stories that cross the world and time. There is a little something more than Twitter.
It says that a child shepherd, who was bored watching his sheep, began to cry and report that a wolf was prowling. This made him popular with the people of the village. It gave him importance. Until the day when the villagers got tired of being told the same story and no longer believed it. One good morning, a real wolf approached, the child screamed and nothing helped. The wolf ate everyone.
Do you still believe in these numbered COP conferences?
They all seem to end in failure. A few superficial measures, of course, but details. The one in Montreal will look like all the others.
We will first be told with delirious enthusiasm, by delegates – who have come from all over the world in big planes – who eat petit fours and make candy declarations on the day of the closing (still funny that we erect a closing to self-congratulate: it could be called Closing day, well!). We will be told of progress while wallowing in the powdered sugar of symbols. Then we will change our minds: it was not enough. We will set other targets that no one wants to reach. No one will reach them anyway. Back here on the COP27: should be delighted with the creation of an aid fund of 100 billion! Bullshit. No need for this mirage. We are already inventing money for all the other disasters on a case-by-case basis.
Every day for several decades, we have been told that we are headed for an ecological, political, economic or biodiversity disaster… Scientific conclusions, fear and forecasts are accelerating and anticipating an end of no return. And then presto, another COP. Because it needs to be talked about, as if talking about it holds the deadline in check. Industrialists listen, smiling restrained. Militants still believe in it a little (fortunately) and will be (irremediably) disappointed. It would seem that we all know that there is urgency, even the thugs, it seems, who continue to reap the profits. Denial seems to be more of a part of our nature than the fear of losing our right to blindness. We will essentially repeat the same reflexes during COP91 or COP247 in a few years.
It becomes easier and easier to believe less. Nobody can come to an agreement. It’s a bit like what happens when you leave too much slack to delegates, politicians and bureaucrats of ideas: you save here and there a butterfly, a frog and a plant, and you congratulate yourself for having made progress . Too little too late, distinguished guests.
In the dictionary, we say of the expression “crying wolf”:
… with the consequent risk of not being listened to in the event of real danger.
I believe and see climate change, but less and less people who say they can change things. I am now one of those who no longer expect miracles.
And I blame the COPs for their drunkenness and hot guy pleading. We need draconian passive measures and less impunity for these people who, after 10 days of discussions (again), will have given the world the brief illusion of progress.
That morning when I didn’t scream, the wolves went back to doing their wolf stuff and I went back to camp to make myself a coffee with the feeling of having had a great patent.
About missing your targets: when you practice, archery is OK; we tell ourselves that at the next arrow we will do better. On the hunt, when it’s true, I’ve never had a second chance. Stay quiet AND efficient. Panic, it seems to me, cannot be discussed with your mouth full, a glass in your hand. No offense to my friends in power for whom the future passes through official voices that erect fences and keep at a distance those who would like to have a voice to cry out more justly.