What Actually Happened at COP26?

we talked about. It's all the Pizza Gate massacred. It is a micro budget under a hundred thousand dollars film that looks great. They did a really good job with the budget they had about UM an Alex Jones employee type person and a mass shooter who go looking for UH to try to solve the Pizza Gate things. Oh boy, it is a an actually very nuanced and I think deeply knowledgeable commentary on specifically like the Texan conspiracy scene.

Like it's a like film. They're Alex Jones character who's played by a woman in this They film in the original studio that he recorded in back and like the filmmaker who did this gets like the culture in the area, and kind of the relationship between the people who get radicalized and do ship and the people who just profit from it. It's a very good Um it's it is, by the way, a grindhouse horror movie. Like whatever you're expecting. It's not that it is, like it is an incredibly

gory grindhouse movie. Um, but it's it's pretty it's pretty fun. What does that have to do with cup Nothing at all, but it has a lot to do with it could happen here because all right, well watch it anyway. Um, this is that could happen here. I show about how things are kind of falling apart and how we can then maybe slow that down or prepare for the uncertain future. Um. An episod it about cops, right, I mean, I mean

we are we are planning an episode on Washington State Patrol. Um. But no, this is episode is a different a different kind of cop about just as useful. Um So, in the first five episodes of The Daily Show or season two, which if you haven't listened to you should definitely listen to those, as they kind of act as our show's

manifesto of sorts. But nevertheless, the first time episodes of the scripted daily show put forth like a more like realistic, non sugarcoated look at what climate change will bring if we continue on our current course. Um, but not just looking at the obvious environmental and extreme weather effects, but

also like the socio political effects. So when I was helping Robert out with the research for those episodes, some of the best indicators of like the mainstream conception of the scientific, environmental and political status of climate change was at the United Nations past uh I I PCC reports, which is the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, and the COP conferences. So during the first few weeks of this past November, November one, the twenty six annual COP

conference took place in Glasgow. Um. And yeah, the name of the conference is kind of a decent indication on how useful these things actually are. But a COPS stands for a Conference of the parties, And for almost three decades they've been like the main international stage uh for for countries and companies to discuss climate related information and

like they're alleged like goals. Um, so yeah, they're a good indicator not onlike sometimes they do present actual good science and like decent predictions, but they're often just like a good indication of what kind of the mainstream people think about what climate change is. And you know what the people in power, how they are viewing it and how urgent they think it's worth addressing versus how much

money they want to spend on it. So the most notable COP in recent memory was in Paris COP twenty one. This is kind of where the Paris Climate Accords were born. Uh. The commitment was to aim for one point five degrees of warming and it was signed on by nearly all major countries. Of course the US signed on, left then

resigned on. But anyway, under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to bring forth like a national plans UH figuring figuring out how they would reduce their emissions, but they would do it like by themselves, and they would be called n d c s or nationally determined contributions. And the idea was for every five years countries would gather up and present their current plans on the national stage. This

was what COPPY was going to be. Now, it was delayed a year because of the pandemic, but COP twenty SI was the time for countries to present their n d c s on for like their updated versions on their plans to reduce some missions. So most of the NDCs got submitted before the conference and kind of led

the discussion of the conference. UM By like mid October, Uh, think about seventy of the countries or uh, you know, states that signed on to the Paris Agreement submitted their submitted their version of the NDCs and and and those countries about a hundred and forty of them are responsible for the majority of global emissions. So that that that was what kind of led up to two COP twenty six from happening. UM. And the the overarching aim of the conference, according to UP president UM, when I try

to pronounce this name um outlock uh sharma UM. He said that the the the idea for the conference was to like keep alive Paris Agreements target to keep global temperatures from rising above one point five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels. So that was that was like the goal of the conference going into it was to kind of keep this idea of the Paris Climate Accords of still being achievable. UM. And that's and that's not what

happened at the top twenties. UM. Now it's it's it's important to kind of point out that the commitments laid out in the Pairs Accords don't come close to limiting global warming to one point five degrees, as it is said in the accords. Like like they they acknowledge that, um, which is what the kind of NDCs are for. But even still those are just non those are those are

just non binding agreements. But anyway, so the cord the accords and the restrictions and goals and well there's no restrictions, it's just goals. The goals and them don't don't come close to limiting to one point five degrees. And we've already most likely shot way past the point of that being in any way achievable. Um. But you know, we can still limit things from being megabad like four degrees. But we are we are already on a certain path.

So in in asking nations to set tougher targets by next year for cutting climate warming emissions, the new agreement at Glasgow acknowledge that the commitments that were in place are inadequate and if rigorously followed, the new national pledges so include the stuff including the Paras Accords and the new Glasgow packed um and all of the individual like uh n d c s. If all of those are followed, the world is now on track for a two point one to two point four degrees celsius of warming by

the end of the century. And that is the lower estimate. As we'll see later on. Higher estimates were also um shown at at the at the Glasgow conference. So we have the the idea was to hopefully keep it to one point five and already we're pushing at back by almost a whole a whole degree if we're going to like two point four. Um, so that that's that's like the main one of the main impacts there is like just totally kissing one point five goodbye, Like no what, no one even is going to view that as a

possibility at this point. Huh. So, I don't know how many people were still looking at that as really a goal. Apparently some people of the planners of copy apparently were, um but I mean, I know for us, we've we've been aware of that, and I'm not sure how you know, really what mainstream liberals were thinking before this, but hopefully at the very least, maybe Cop twenty six made them realize that maybe it's there's a there's kind of it's

it's made maybe worse than what you were thinking. Um. But there there are other things did happen at at Glasgow that are that are worth looking into. Um. So the main quote unquote achievements of of the Glasgow Deal besides like revisiting the emissions cutting plants to try to keep stuff down, which of course we're you know, not not not met in shot way past. Um, but there we also had the first ever inclusion of a commitment

to limit coal use. Now, the way phrasing is gonna work here is gonna be really interesting because the reason why this deal got passed is because some very specific shifts in their phrasing around coal use. Um. The other thing that CAT that CAT twenty six tried to do was increase financial help for so called developing countries and provide funds and assistance for like climate disasters. So like when when like extreme weather events happen, have a set

of funds uh set aside to help countries in these disasters. Now, those are that that is a good idea, but as we'll see later, the way COPY actually did it is not actually doing it. It's like they're they're they're pushing there, they're postponing this kind of goal, but they're just making

it a prospect. But back to coal. So, the Glasgow Climate Pact was the first ever climate deal to explicitly planned to reduce coal, which was a one one of the worst, like fossil fuels for four greenhouse gasses UM and and and coal really can be phased out. Coal can be phased out by um electric power really easily. It's it's it is the easiest one. UM. It's it's it's it's way easier to phase out cold than it is, uh natural gas or other um or sorry, let's see

the the the other main one. There's three. There's a coal, natural gas, what's what's the last one? Regular gas? I guess so yeah, yeah, petroleum based stuff. UM yeah, But so the coals because coal is you mostly used for heat, um, electrically generated heat is way is way easier than all than those other two. So coal coal really should be

phased out as soon as possible. UM. But the commitments to phase out coal that was introduced in earlier negotiations UM led to some fighting, specifically among India and China, who were in in strong opposition to the phrasing and the actual constraints of of the deal UM. And a lot of this is like the argument that like, if these countries are still developing, it's not fair to them to remove this resource when other developed nations had it,

so that that that's that's the thing. We see that argument a lot around, like climate change stuff is like, oh, you you're just gonna stop other countries from developing because you you you got to get to this certain point of being a successful like wealthy nation um. And like you know with all this like an industrial development on the back of fossil fuels and stuff. But then now

you're going to remove that opportunity for other countries. Now there is there is UM a lot of stuff around like the growth frameworks that address this issue and specific fickly try to try to get um fossil fuel savings like a decrease in emissions and be able to use some of those gains to assist countries in getting stuff set up to a decent standard of living UM. But you know that that is going to be addressed on a whole other scale around like capitalism and and how

countries intervened in other countries. That that's part of a bigger political question but anyway, um, Indian China did not like that, did not like the coal deal. Um. So in the end, the countries did agree to phase down coal rather than phase out coal. So that that that is the phrase that they ended up using is phase down. Um. The people weren't super happy about this. Uh. The Cutty six president um Alec Sharma said that he was deeply sorry for how these events unfolded. And like focus on

calls good. It's it's responsible for about of annual CEO two emissions. But also like just focusing on cole leaves of really big lack of discussion on oil and gas like there's like those are also like very bad and arguably we should be focusing on those a lot like those are those are the main ones we should get We should get rid of coal, yes, but if we just focus on that, then there's a lot of other stuff going on. So that is that is a lot of coal talk. Uh, you know who also uses coal.

Our sponsors, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin um big friend of the pod. Thank you, thank you for always having our back. Joe. Anyway, here's the ads and we are back talking about copy and there is there's a

decent and there's stuff. Stuff did happen. So and I know it is going to be more of a sign C in numbers episode, but it is worth actually figuring out what what happened there because everyone just kind of had the perception like, oh, copy was a failure, because yeah it was, um, but it's it's it is good to know what actually is going on at things like this because if we're gonna get some kind of you know,

liberal change, this is where it's going to happen. So it is good to keep an eye on what these types of people are thinking. So we we left off on talking about how their plans to phase down coal, and there was like a general lack of focus on oil and gas. And it is interesting, um if you So there was uh a group of activists led by this UH I think I think it's like an NGO

called Global Witness. UM assessed the participant list published by the u N at the start of the meeting and they found that there was five hundred three people with links to fossil fuel interests who were like accredited members of the Climate Summit and so and they were like delicates. So COP twenty six delegates associated with fossil fuels outnumbered national delegate numbers for every other country, So there were more people representing fossil fuel interests than there were representing

any individual country. So you're thinking, maybe maybe I wonder why this stuff is not going too good. Oh, it's because it's being run mostly by fossil fuel companies. That's that's uh huh. That's an interesting, interesting little thing there. Um yeah. So the the other the other kind of notable thing about copy is uh it uh it. It led to a quote unquote breakthrough in the rules for

government led carbon markets. So this is the thing that the neoliberals are really excited about, is this idea of carbon markets, because it's a way to make more money kind of off of removing carbon and just to create a lot of red tape and bureaucracy around this idea

of lowering emissions. So I guess one of the ways to describe carbon markets if you're kind of unfamiliar with this idea, is that countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets in their national climate pledges are like penalized for this. Um. So, so countries that countries that don't meet their emission targets or or want to just

pursue like less, less expansive emission cuts. What what what this deal set out to do is that instead of actually lowering emissions, they can purchase like emissions reduction tokens and credits from other nations that have cut their emissions more than the amount that they pledged. Uh so, like by you know, moving to low carbon energy and various stuff.

So the turn of phrase that people were using to discuss this to how you can like purchase purchase credits to represent emissions that you didn't cut but wanted to, is that this can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expending renewable energy, and other projects to combat climate change. Um So, the idea here is that the money used to purchase these credits is going to get put into other things that will help fight climate change.

But all of this is non binding and speculative, and it just furthers this whole carbon market concept, which I'm not thrilled about. Um yeah, we should, we should do like a full episode of carbon markets. But the thing, so I I I this is, you know, this is the thing I studied academically in college and is incredibly important for everyone to understand that carbon markets are fake and do not work at all. Ever, no one's gotten a national into work, and no one's ever gott an

international one to work. Uh, implementation of carbon markets, Like China had a big thing that they're gonna implemented carbon market. Uh it was fake. It didn't work. Their carbon emission still increase, very very like how fucky carbon markets can be.

So you get carbon credits if you're a business like Tesla that makes no emission electronic vehicles, and Tesla for a lot of its earlier history, made a significant chunk of its profits selling carbon credits to polluting industries and basically saying, you guys keep polluting, we got your back. Like the fact that we're putting electric cars out onto the street means you guys can keep admitting at the same Well, like that's that's like literally how how kind

of the business can work. It's it's not the best way to fix the problem. Yeah, So there was a lot of a lot of talk was around carbon markets. Um, because that's of course with the neil liberal establishment, neo liberal englishment is going to focus on because is it. It still is within their kind of worldview. Um, how do we monetize the rot? Yeah, how do we how do we make money off of the world ending? Um? Which I guess we're going to see a lot more

of that uh in the next in the next few decades. Um. The the other the other thing that they decided on is, uh, next year there's gonna there's gonna be again. So there's there's They decided to procrastinate, which is just a general theme of COP conferences. We've been doing. It's what everyone's been doing about plimate change since forever. So yeah, the

main thing they do is decide to procrastinate. Um. So next year there's gonna be a U N committee to report on progress towards delivering one billion dollar per year in a promised climate funding. Uh. This was after rich nations failed to deliver on the deadline four said funds um and then financing is gonna be discussed again in twenty four six at those conferences. Um. But this this deal left a lot of more vulnerable nations who were going to rely on this promised funding. Uh kind of

just they just left them without things. So the whole idea was that like Yeah, we need this funding to help people in these disasters and different losses and damages, and to help, you know, start start making more um renewable energy technology in lieu of doing tons of tons of coal mining. And that's where this money was going to get used for, and it's not happening. Um so and this, this promise was initially made at a UN conference on climate change and we're still we're still pushing

it back year by year. So this pledge is older than I am. Yeah, it sure is. Another pledgement too, as a nine to provide a hundred billion dollars to emerging economies was supposed to be made. That also was missed. Um and it was It was designed to help nations adapt to climate effects and make the transition to clean energy. Um and uh. The copp six president said that around five billion will be mobilized by so cool. Thanks for

saying those numbers, which mean nothing. It's fun. It's fun how you can just talk and say things and it doesn't actually matter. It's It's one of the things that's so frustrating about this is trying to get a handle on like how how a lot of these solutions are supposed to work so like one of the articles if you're trying to actually if you're not just taking our word for it, which you never should, and trying to research like carbon credits and carbon markets and like how

they might work or might help. Like one of the articles you're going to come across is an article in Nature dot org called making Carbon Markets Work for Faster Climate Action. And this is very much obviously from so it's pretty it's pretty recent, and it's not at all a climate denial piece. It's it's just kind of laying out a case for how carbon markets could be very

effective of at reducing emissions. But you have to grapple the whole time you're looking at this with the fact that like they they haven't that that global global emissions are still shoo and they provide a number of like options for how this could work. And it's one of

those things where I'm not gonna say it's impossible. I'm certainly not an expert on this, and you can read through the article um if you want, but it's it's certainly certainly think the thing you can say right now is that carbon markets have not led to a global decrease in emissions because we we have not had emissions decrease other than that little dip we had when a covid uh did it's it's sweet little dance. Yeah, that one month where we could actually see the sky again. Yeah,

that was pretty rad um. But yeah, there's there's I mean, you you can check that article out for kind of the pro carbon markets case. It all seems I mean, one of the things that's frustrating to me about it is it all it's all like, yeah, uh, here's how it might work if you know, everybody got on board the Paris Climate Agreement and also all of this worked ideally, But there's there just doesn't seem to be a lot of I I just don't see any evidence that like

they've shown that this is actually likely to be helpful. Um. It's more just like yeah, this, this could this could work if if we do these other things, um, which

is frustrating. That's like all all of the kind of ship that you get at at at COP twenty six where it's like, yeah, I guess theoretically, if you were to do that, or if that were to work the way you're saying, or if that were to work with the assumption that like all these other factors don't grow over this period of time than than this might help.

But we also know what's happened with emissions and global attempts to reduce climate change um which is not to say that like like emissions in the United States, like there have been there's been a lot that's been done

to curb emissions from the United States. Now, the thing that's often left out of like the discuss should have these different things and how they impacted our emissions is like, well, a lot of those emissions got pushed off to other countries that are now making the things that we were making for I. Yes, So like that that's the big thing when people argue against the growth and they're like, no,

you can. You can still keep growing your economy while lowering emissions, and like, yeah, one country can, but we still want the stuff, so we're just moving it to other countries to produce, so like we're not actually lowering it on a global level. You can lower you can lower it on like an individual country level, but not totally globally because we still want to consume the thing. This is one of the single most frustrating things about

talking to people aball climate change is that Okay. You know, if you if you talk to the sort of Neil Book Carmon market people, right, if you talk about literally anything else, right, the only thing they ever talked about is how the entire world is interconnected, how the entire economies and connected, how we're more interconnected than ever. And then the moment you start talking about climate change, they go, oh, well,

it's all the individual country, individual country, individual country. The economy is not connected at all. It's all about the visual policy makers some country. It's like, no, it's not the it's it's about like all all of the like the the the the the emissions are foreign direct investment driven. Right, it's about it's a it's about's about what it's about where investment money is going. And you cannot and you know this, this is this is why COP and somebody's like,

this is why it doesn't work. And even though it's the only framework that could work, right, you have to have an international response that has to be coordinated. It has to be working across national lines because again that's how the economystem works. But it doesn't because a state's individual states can't and will not ever solve this and then be COP is like, Okay, so here's here's your

international framework. But also we're just gonna have you know, the actual the the the actual international framework is going to be just essentially hammered up by a bunch of fossil fuel companies. And so it's just you know, it's

it's the worst of both worlds. I mean, it's and it you can see, there's there's some kind of acknowledgement at the fact that this is an international problem in in like the basic idea of of carbon markets, which includes the idea that like, um, you can companies that that emit emit lesson, don't use up their carbon budget can like sell carbon credits and you can do this

across international lines. And like if we hold if we hold companies to different like emission standards internationally based on things like the Paris Climate Agreement, then that will cause the carbon credit system to work better. Um, there's that

acknowledgement that it is an international problem. But again I just don't I don't see I don't see evidence that it's working, and they like none of the evidence that I've read makes it seem like there's a very good case that this is going to at the very least that this is going to provide the kind of emissions productions that are necessary to forestall the worst case scenarios that are coming. Um. And if we're gonna be again, to be completely intellectually honest here, we can talk about

d growth all day long. UM. I have a similar problem with that that I do to a lot of these the different kind of targets that Copy six introduced, stuff like carbon markets, where it's like, I don't I don't see that solving the problem either. It's like a theoretical it's it's yeah, if we were to get people to if if we've gotten people on board with deep growth, then you've already fundamentally shifted the very nature of global

society um. And also the way in which Americans and people in other Western nations like conceived of economics at a fundamental level. UM. And so it's it's one thing to say that like, yeah, if people accepted that and and got on board with a lifestyle that is not based on this this kind of capitalist notion of endless growth, of ever increasing extraction from the world in order to create value, UM, then we could we could actually stop emitting at the kind of levels that are going to

lead to these horrible consequences. Um, the question is like, I don't see, I don't see you you can are I think you can argue that de growth is more realistic in that, Yes, that would absolutely work as opposed to carbon credits and other things where it's like, well theoretically it might work if they do all this other stuff. Yeah, it does. It does revolve on the cultural notion of America and the West completely changing. Um, it's a big

it's a big ask, you know. Yeah, And I mean like there is there's smaller steps, like totally like reorganizing how cities work so we do not use cars, uh, like like like re redoing a public transportation like sector uh in you know, um, making like making like a cellar panels and a renewable energy I required part of like city infrastructure. Right there, there's a there's a lot of ways to push us towards that thing, but there's not one thing we can do right because it is

in large parts of cultural change stuff. Stuff will help with emissions, like if we if we redesign cities around public transportation and make it so stuff is not as as far apart, and yeah, that that's going to help lower emissions if we if we require are all these other types of renewable energy projects to be built into buildings and added on to our current cities, and yeah, that that is going to help lower emissions. But you know, there's there's not one one big step that we can

all do at the same time. And I think that that's I don't know. I'm of two minds about it. One part of me says that's absolutely the most intelligent way to go about it is focusing on things like reducing the use of like like like really all ending car culture in cities, because it's not even a reduction thing.

It has to be like that that has to die. Um. But we're a lot closer to that than ending the idea of like, uh, capitalism, yes, because they're at number one one, because there are capitalists, very capitalist countries that have that do not have a car culture, that like stopped that and that actually like had one at one point and then reworked there. So that's that's and that would Yeah, that is a significant that's probably go that would probably lead to larger emissions reductions than any kind

of carbon credit system could ever lead to. UM. I also and So yeah, I think that that's on an

objective level. Yeah, that's it's smart to focus on stuff like that, where you're all you are arguing for reducing growth, but you're also arguing and for like, hey, your life will be more pleasant if you live in a city where you can walk everywhere and you're not at risk of getting run down by you know, two ton trucks anytime you cross the street, and like you're not dealing with smog and pollution and horrible like hour and a half long communes on these crowded, nightmare highways. Um. But

it's also it's still incrementalist. You know, we we are we are talking here, we are kind of like walking through here, Um, all of the best incremental solutions and and what is the most realistic of those? Um. And I think that's fine. I think that's kind of where we have to be because that is what's most likely

to actually happen to make the problem better. Um. But it is we have to acknowledge it is incremental, Like we're not we're not solving It would be very arrogant to say, like, here's how we solve this problem once and for all. You know, I just want to I think sometimes when you talk about stuff like deep growth, you can get into this, you can kind of it can come across as if you're trying to like simplify, like and if we do this, like it will be perfect.

Like now, this would be like the hardest thing. That's that's like saying we have to confix it by all doing a revolution. It's like it's it's not okay, okay, cool, yeah, I mean yeah, But anyway, we have to do some ads and then we'll be back to finish up kind of their closing expectations on Copy six and the other kind of things happening in the periphery. Um, here's ads. Okay, we are back and we're talking about kind of what

happened towards the end of COP twenty six. So we already kind of discussed how the deal was made, what was in the deal, what things were talked about. Um, now we're kind of going to talk about, you know, the other kind of closing thoughts around it. Um in in in. In the lead up to to cut to play six, the United States Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, who's like he's supposed to be like our climate guy.

Um he he also said the goal of the something it was to it was to you know, hope that we can limit stuff to one point in five degrees. And you know he he called this the last best hope for the world to get its act together. But by the time Cutty six came to the end, his

language and attitude had kind of changed. Um after after two weeks of debate and negotiation, his his final remarks reflected the kind of the points we've been talking about, how um and and and said, like like the government energy policy is currently in place around the world are projected to result in about two point seven degrees celsius of warming above pre industrial levels, and government pledges to cut climate emissions would limit warming to two point four

uh if they are met. So that's the again, we're just launching way past this like mythical fantasy of of one point five degrees. And the other scary things is that we're getting a lot, a lot closer to large scale feedback loops. Uh. Feedback loops are things like once we have reached a certain degree of warming, environmental effects will be triggered that will cascade and produce like exponential

growth in warming. This is like a this it's not purely theoretical, but it is mostly stuff that we still probably can prevent, and we really need to get on it like a sap, because once these things start happening, they are very hard to reverse. One of the biggest ones that are that are already being affected is photosynthesis by plants on land and how that is decreasing its

ability to suck up carbon um. About of our annual carbon emissions are removed by the air by photosynthesis um and the rest of which are dissolved in the ocean, causing ocean acidification or that you just hang around in the atmosphere, which causes you know, a bigger thermal blanket. So uh, photos that this is has like a thermal maximum beyond which carbon can only be taken so much of it in and then the process which by plants

give off carbon and water actually increases. And we are already at that point in a in a lot of places, and we are we are at that we we achieve the warming required to get to that point a few times throughout the past decade. So land based carbon uptake is projected to decline by nearly fifty percent as early as and and these effects have not been included in any of the you know, published pathways leading to lower like lower degrees of warming. UM. And again this isn't,

this isn't just as speculative. Like the biggest example of this that we can like point to is like the Amazon rainforest. How that is now a net emitter because it is no longer sucking up enough carbon to offset the amount of carbon and actually shoots out. So we need to stop deforestation to keep planting more trees essentially

because that that sucks. And also just as a general kind of indicator of the cascading effects that are happening, and we are we're still on the path for kind of large, large scale disasters in a lot of places around the world. UM. The it's around ninet of the Earth's land area is in pretty pretty dire of risk on our current emission pathway of the Marshall Islands and all dol VI's UM, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Middle East, parts

of North Africa, and Central America. UM. Overall, around one third of the land humans occupied are predicted to either drowned by by sea level rise or became or become too hot for human life. Just by the end of this century alone, So that that will cause you know, migration, panics and wars and all, like a whole bunch of bad things that we can we can limit that, Like, that is something that we need to limit now, and

if we don't, it's still it's still happening. So these are the other kind of things talked about at the end. Um So that was kind of copy as a whole. Um. The one last thing I want to mention is just how evil Facebook is. Um so kind of kind of an aside, but um, Facebook's vice president of Global Affairs UH talked um and about Facebook's efforts to combat climate misinformation.

UM as the Glasgow somewhat began. But as this was happening, conservative media, let's like Newsmax or we're running ads on Facebook calling a global global warming a hoax, gaining hundreds of thousands of views, stuff like you know Canadas so One's and Daily Wire, we're spreading climate misinformation. But and you know, as as Facebook is bragging about its ability

to to combat misinformation around climate change. UM. The UK based think tank Influence Map, which identified misleading Facebook ads

UH from several media outlets. UM A round copy also found that fossil field companies and lobbying groups spent half a million dollars on political and social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in over twenty two million impressions, including content that promoted environmental effects under what we would call like green washing stuff like you know, the American Petroleum Institute putting up putting an ad out over like a natural landscape as it like touts its efforts to

tackle climate change. Um, so all all of that kind of stuff. So I just think it's really dumb because Facebook breaks about its ability to combat climate misinformation as its running ads saying climate changes the hoax and then doing generally green green washing is more common, but still it's frustrating. Um and yeah, just there's a note like we talked about this in the Facebook it as it's

a bastards that dropped recently. But like the number one spreader right now of climate disinformation on Facebook is bright Bart, which a lot of the Facebook papers have gone on too. Like the extreme lengths, Facebook executives went to keep bright Bart as one of their like trusted news partners and continue putting their stuff out to a huge audience because it goes very viral. It was good for engagement on the platform, and that's the decision. Facebooks like whatever they say.

This is like when we when we're talking about car carbon credits, when we're talking about like the different proposed solutions, I'll do a bit of waffling because I don't want to come across as too certain about what the right way to go forward is. When it comes to how Facebook has handled climate disinformation, it's very black and white. Um, they enabled it for direct profit and they talked about it, and people within the company were like, Hey, we're deliberately

enabling climate change misinformation in order to make more money. Um, it's a it's a it's a very easy case to make. Yeah.

So that wraps up my uh my report back on cop I know a lot of a lot of stuff was like those are there's a lot of headlines like before the somebody even ended, before the deal was even finalized, I was like, twenty is a failure, which is like yes, but I think I think it is worth actually really learning what happens at these things, because I think we have this idea that they're like some like mythic secret gathering of people to discuss plans, and it's like no,

like you can actually like see everything they're talking about, like it's it's all out in the open, like you can actually see what what the plans are. It doesn't need to be all shrouded in it doesn't need be

like shrouded in mystery. So I just wanted to give people like a rundown on what the actual people in power, how they're discussing climate change, and what their expectations are, and how you know, expectations have you know, the past five years have risen by basically a degree, right, because like we're like we can do one point five, and now we're like we can do two point five. So that is what we've done in five years. That's what's happened.

And that's what justifies the kind of blanket pessimism about anything coming from COP twenty six, about anything being suggested by like a state actor and international organization, which is that like we've all watched the last twenty years, like they've said a lot of great stuff about what could work. It's like that Nature article about like okay, well, like you've got a bunch of math here arguing about how it might work. But we've got the last twenty years

of policies to snay but it probably won't. Right. But it's almost certainly not going to work, right, So we we can say, like, yeah, theoretically this might be helpful, but like, realistically nothing, everything you guys have argued about in the same way has been a miserable failure pretty much. Well, that that wraps it up for us. Uh. You can follow the show on Twitter and apparently Instagram. Um at Happen Here pod and cool sid Media. We got a

new cool Stone Media show dropping soon. Uh, Mega Corp. That's pretty exciting. Yeah, check it out. It's about how we love Amazon and you should pay the money. I don't think that's what it's about, but anyway, Yeah, so buy some carbon offsets from Amazon and with that. With that, we're closing the show. Happen It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening