Peeling back the PR reveals that the dish that's on offer is nothing short of a climate catastrophe. Big business is writing a recipe guaranteed to cook the planet:
- We can’t choose the best ingredients—maximum economic growth and a ‘better’ fossil fuel (natural gas) must be included. Conflicting measures such as restrictions on dirty fuel imports must be left out
- We can’t control the cooking process—market signals, not regulators, will guide the way
- It’s the same old business-as-usual recipe dressed up as ‘cordon verte’—they want to appear green, but industry’s agenda is to keep on emitting greenhouse gases and have them ‘sucked’ out of the atmosphere with pie-in-the-sky new technologies instead
- In some cases it’s just yesterday’s left overs dressed up as a new meal—with industrial agriculture being re-branded as 'climate smart' for example
The market-based and techno-fix solutions on the table are diverting attention from the real culprits and delaying real action. Most political leaders have been happy to choose measures that suit existing business models and continued corporate profit-making. We need a different cookbook! And different cooks, for that matter.
At this point in time there’s little prospect of the deal that’s being cooked up in Paris delivering anything for the climate. But it could still be an important turning point in terms of de-legitimising the dangerous and destructive role that corporate climate criminals are currently playing in climate policy-making. Let’s clean up our kitchens, both in Paris and in our capitals!