COP27 and Greenwashing

Greenwashing is a term I was unfamiliar with until recently. 

Greenwashing: disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

The COP gatherings every year along with IPCC reports on progress in climate change are the main political mechanisms to influence government policies. While the term “greenwashing” seems to be used to describe corporations making empty promises in order to look good, the term could equally apply to governments as a whole who make promises without real commitments to create the illusion of progress when there is none.

The COP conferences highlight the conflict between economic growth and climate action, particularly in the developing world. Even if the developed world could eliminate all their emissions, growth in the developing world means that emissions would continue to rise. The current wind and solar favorites in the developed world are too expensive for the developing world which is why emissions are still growing. 

So COP conferences exist because of the concerns of environmentalists, but highlight the economic problems of the preferred solutions of environmentalists that make these solutions politically un-viable. Nevertheless these are still the politically correct solutions.

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_n7b.pdf

​By Edmund Kelly