COP (26) out

So, what’s the UN’s COP26 climate summit all about? Well, put in stark terms, it’s a belated attempt to stop us drowning from the floods that will put out the worldwide fires being caused by Climate Change. Or something. What we can be sure about is that Climate Change is a fact, rather like gravity and evolution. There is no longer any meaningful scientific debate. On the creek of life, we are in the shit part of it. The question is this: what are we going to do about it? We’ll find out later on but I suggest the answer will be not much.

From what I can gather, the world has so far agreed the following:

• Stop poorer people from driving by making it too expensive
• Force people to use trains, which in the UK are far too expensive for poorer people to take
• Tax people, by which we mean poorer people
• Er…
• That’s it

I may have missed some of the more subtle aspects of the summit but that seemed to be it for me. And as always it’s the little man and woman who will end up paying the cost.

Apparently, we will all need to be driving electric cars from a week next Tuesday. Once more, this will be a simple thing for the better off. Al ‘You can can call me Boris’ Johnson referred to the £250,000 per annum he was paid by the Telegraph for his piss poor column as ‘chicken feed’ so it won’t be an issue for him. He also has a penchant for private jets and expensive foreign holidays which his friends give him for free. So, that’s what he means. When he says we must all take action against climate change, he means us, not him.

The tough choices will all be for the lower orders to deal with. £9 to drive into Bristol City centre? I’d imagine that might be a challenge to a care worker on the minimum wage, zig-zagging across town in the old banger which is all they can afford. No worries. We’ll get someone from Clifton with a gas guzzling Chelsea tractor to do the job. After all, there are plenty of jobs out there. Let’s put the upper classes into work. Yeah, right.

Of course we need big changes. My partner and I enjoyed a short holiday in the Lake District a week or so ago. Our preference was to use the the train but the cheapest available fare was £250 for the pair of us, involving as many as four changes depending on the time of travel. Petrol was about a fifth of that cost and driving was far quicker than letting the train tale the strain (on our wallets). Well, what do you think we did?

But if you’re loaded, then maybe £250 probably isn’t a lot of money. That’s something I still can’t get my head round, growing as I did to regard anything more than a pound as a large sum of money. When last year I bought a pair of trainers for over £50 it felt like I was paying a million quid. To get to the Lake District by train probably does need the resources of a millionaire.

Meanwhile, the planet burns and floods, millions are displaced, whole towns and cities disappear and COP 26 delegates have a nice chat, issue a bland, generic communique that was probably drawn up long before the conference took place.

I mean, I want to do something. We should all do something. But I suspect some of us will be told to do a lot and some will do nothing. And for the rich and famous, life will go on as it always did before. One thing that remains the same is that there is one rule for us and another for them, isn’t that right, Al (Boris)?