Gaie Houston: It’s Time for a Few F-words
Photo by Engin Akyurt via Unsplash
Ancient Anglo-Saxon alliteration is needed here, to challenge the devastating denials of the climate change cop-outs. Frankly the letter F needs to feature as the figure. F-words can tell of terrible threat, of Foreboding and Famine and Fear and Ferocious Fires and Floods, of Frustration and Fallibility and Failure.
It seems that the current favourite F-words at COP28, the international climate meeting in session as I write, are to do with Fudging the Figures. Much of the time, Finance for the Fossil Fuel industries is the prime motivator here. Did you see what the global subsidy to these industries amounts to? Hold your hat: SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. That would be enough money to honour a noticeable proportion of the pledges that have been made to the cause of mitigating climate change, pledges that are still unfulfilled, made by nations who talk a virtuous game and play a dirty one.
Here are some less Frightful F-words:
First, Phase, no, Fase out Fossil Fuels. At COP28 the Figure-Fudgers had that phrase, or Frase, watered down to be just one tiny word different:
Phase Down Fossil Fuels, they wrote. Down is not Out. Down lets you go right on mining and burning and making money and climate-heating, with no promise at all that a time will ever arrive when we have finally moved on to using only the renewable energy sources that are already in production, and what is more are proving cheaper than the polluting fuels that are now Frogmarching us towards Fires and Floods and suffering and death, mostly for people who are out of sight to the polluters.
An estimated $2.4 trillion investment is needed for the developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. That’s not much more than one third of the Financial subsidies now enjoyed by the Fossil Fuel industries every year. Have you seen what has actually been pledged, when $2.4 trillion are needed? Not delivered, mark you, just pledged - $700 million. That is significant noughts different from trillion.
Gestalt is the therapy of the obvious. Here is the hippo in the hall, the mammoth in the manor, elephant on the elevator obvious. The most Fearsome Figure in the Field of Fighting climate change at the moment is Failure. It is not too late to Fuss, to Fulminate, to Focus on being the Friends of this planet rather than its Foes, and so save the wonders achieved in our history, for more generations of life here, for all nature, and more of us Flawed yet amazing humans.
Gaie Houston
jgaie.houston@gmail.com
