This month, the COP26 “climate” conference of the United Nations is taking place in Glasgow. Many questions can be raised here. What’s the actual purpose of this event? Is it to raise awareness over the issue? Is it to agree specific decisions? What’s the democratic legitimacy of decisions or recommendations agreed at the conference were many of the participants are representatives of authoritarian, corrupt and oppressive regimes? Is it wise to have these kinds of events in times of Covid? How credible is COP26 in raising awareness of the importance of reducing CO2 emissions, if accompanied with a parade of 400 private jets to fly in the likes of Prince Albert of Monaco, scores of royals and dozens of ‘green’ CEOs?
Apart from all these concerns, there is one matter which deserves specific attention: the enormous degree of groupthink plaguing any proper discussion. Dissident noises truly are not appreciated, and hysteria is not an exception, as witnessed by a statement made at the COP26 conference by UN secretary-general António Guterres, who declared that countries are “digging [their] own graves” by using fossil fuels and that “Failure is not an option. Failure is a death sentence.”
Given that renewables only amount to around 10% of global energy supply – not to be confused with electricity production, which in turn only amounts to 17% of energy supply – renewables unfortunately do not yet have the capacity to cater for our energy needs. Knowing that a lot of that 10% consists of hydro and biomass, it should be clear to everyone that we cannot yet count on wind and solar energy and the “transition” to the stage where this will be the case may still be long.
Therefore, only three key energy sources exist: coal, gas and nuclear. Of these three, only nuclear avoids CO2 emissions – apart from being much safer and also a much better option in geostrategic terms. In sum, intellectually, to achieve the drastic CO2 emission reductions sought by the COP26 crowd, is impossible without nuclear energy.
In the real world, policy makers are starting to get this. French President Macron has now fully embraced nuclear – even announcing to construct two new nuclear plants – while also in the Netherlands and the UK, the mood is becoming ever more pro nuclear.
Not so at COP26, where nuclear industry advocates were kept out of the so-called “Green Zone”, where companies enjoy higher visibility, instead having to settle for the quieter “Blue Zone”. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recalled that at the previous COP meeting, “I was warned not to even attend”. Grossi did attend COP26, telling the public that “None died from radiation [at Fukushima],” which was followed by some in the audience guffawing to signal their disbelief. Courageously, Grossi didn’t concede, saying “the facts are the facts,” explaining that the thousands of deaths that occurred were due to the tsunami and the stress of evacuation.
Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, who moderated the discussions, recalled that “after the event, I saw that pro-nuclear factions on social media were swift to condemn my “shameful” and “ignorant” behaviour”, with them accusing her not to have countered Grossi’s claims. Tett notes however that “Afterwards, I read a UN study published this year on the 10th anniversary of the disaster, which, in line with Grossi’s arguments, reported “no adverse health effects” on the local population from radiation sickness and projected none in the future”. She concludes that she had been too negative herself on nuclear and had written her piece to defend Grossi, even if this may “infuriate the anti-nuclear lobby and provoke more social media attacks”. This can serve as a good case study in how events like COP26 truly are an echo chamber and how disturbed attendants are to hear anything challenging their worldview, in particular facts. Even if one could somehow prove there were a lot more victims from Fukushima than currently assumed, the rarity of the event would still strengthen nuclear as the safest energy source, even ahead of solar and wind.
Another “COP” event is taking place this month, this time however hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This “Conference of the Parties” event is dubbed “COP9”, takes place in The Hague, and is meant to discuss the WHO’s “Framework Convention on Tobacco Control” (FCTC), which aims to combat harmful tobacco consumption. Simultaneously, there are discussions on tobacco alternatives, like vaping, and on how to counter smuggling.
Also here, unfortunately, group think is omnipresent. Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise, given how the WHO blindly followed China’s lead at the beginning of the Covid crisis in early 2020, ignoring the warnings by Taiwan.
Industry voices are being prevented from attending. That means manufacturers, retailers and aligned industry. It also means small tobacco farmers. At one of the previous editions of the conference, “COP7” in Delhi, Indian tobacco farmers that were protesting were simply rounded up and transferred miles further. NGO’s are welcome, on the contrary.
U.S. legal scholar Gregory Jacob, who helped negotiate the FCTC while serving as an Attorney Advisor in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, takes a closer look at “Secrecy and Exclusion in the FCTC Implementation Process” in a 2018 article for a legal journal. He writes:
“One could hardly imagine attempting to exclude unions (or business interests, for that matter) from participating in International Labour Organization (“ILO”), solely because they have an economic interest in the matters under discussion. Economic interests should of course always be transparently disclosed so that conflicts of interest can be identified and considered when crafting policy, but it is senseless for policymakers to cut themselves off entirely from useful sources of data and information.”
He also describes how Dr. Vera da Costa e Silva, Head of the Convention Secretariat during COP7 in Delhi, dubbed small tobacco farmers “malevolent”. Jacob remarks the following about this:
“Even such disfavored groups have civil rights of participation and association that are guaranteed by (among other treaties and conventions) Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
It also demonstrate the lack of openness towards any dissident opinions.
Furthermore, Jacob also mentions:
“For the most extreme anti-tobacco advocates, it has not been enough merely to silence impacted groups from having a voice in policy debates. These advocates have pushed for a substantially deeper level of isolation for tobacco interests, demanding (oftentimes successfully) that any government official or international organization that has contact of any kind with the tobacco industry must itself be shunned, isolated, and barred from participating in FCTC proceedings.”
This has been evident from Interpol being banned from providing input to COP on countering tobacco smuggling, despite the fact that the organization is obviously highly knowledgeable about this. The reason for the ban is apparently because Interpol had been cooperating with the tobacco industry to track shipments. This is sectarianism on steroids.
In the same vain, the WHO doesn’t have a lot of patience for any considerations that sometimes, permitting a lesser evil may help save lives. Vaping is a good example of this, as allowing may truly help tobacco consumers to abandon tobacco. At least, that’s the policy option currently picked by the United Kingdom, which is about to become the first country in the world to prescribe vaping for medicinal use, as a means for smokers to quit tobacco. This contrasts with how WHO but also the EU policy level is tackling the issue, as its “Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks” (SCHEER) was already accused of treating evidence selectively, downplaying how vaping helps people to quite smoking.
Perhaps the UK’s policy choice may ultimately turn out to be the wrong one, but at least it is the result of a science-driven informed debate, where no option was prematurely abandoned and where dissidents not conforming to mainstream thinking were given a chance to make their sometimes counterintuitive case. This should increase the chance to get it right. This kind of open debate is not something one would often witness at the level of international organisations.