Comfort Blanket

### Reader’s Letter to The Guardian, 14th November 2024 ###

Dear Editor,

I read your editorial on the the Baku COP-talks (The Guardian, 12th Nov 2024, link below) and agree with Antonio Guterres that the world seems to be engaged in a “masterclass of climate destruction”. Unfortunately the COP-talks seem to be caught up in a “Groundhog Day” of procrastination and obfuscation with the choice of another petro-state (after the UAE last year) to host the talks being another (negative) masterclass in its own right.

Here, the thing that I repeatedly don’t understand is that the emphasis seems to be on money (reparation payments) and on technical solutions with the final statement in the article being “The transition to clean energy needs to be faster”.

Of course funding-assistance (to poorer countries) and technology have roles to play but surely the main emphasis should be on us using less energy: We simply don’t need many of the energy-guzzling activities that we engage in with it being my strong belief that life would be much more fulfilling if we lived more locally and more simply (e.g. with local economies and efficient public transport).

For me, kidding ourselves that, with the right technology, we can simply carry on with “flippant consumerist indulgence” is a very dangerous comfort-blanket which will sleep-walk us into climate Armageddon.

Yours,
Alan Mitcham

Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/the-guardian-view-on-cop29-15c-has-been-passed-so-speed-up-the-green-transition