COP28 opens. The conversation I had on the way to school.
Dubai, November 30
COP28 opened in Dubai on Thursday. I know this because I mentioned it at breakfast and my son, who is nine, said: 'What number are we on?' I said twenty-eight. He said: 'So they've been having this meeting for twenty-eight years?' I said yes, more or less. He said: 'And the climate is still getting worse?' I said: it's complicated — some things are getting better, some things are getting worse. He said: 'That doesn't sound like a very good meeting.'
He's not wrong. And the question — what does the meeting produce? — is one that climate scientists and policy experts have debated for decades without resolving. COP meetings produce commitments, and commitments produce some action, and some action is better than no action, but the relationship between the commitments and the actual trajectory of emissions and warming is not a simple linear one.
I didn't explain all of this on the way to school. What I said was: twenty-eight meetings is a long time, and the fact that they keep having them suggests that enough people believe they matter. Whether they matter enough is a different question.
He thought about this. Then: 'Do you think they matter enough?'
I said: I think they matter in the way that most large, complicated human efforts matter — imperfectly, slowly, less than the scale of the problem requires, but more than nothing.
He said: 'That's a very adult way of answering.'
That is a very adult way of answering. Yes. Because the adult answer to COP is the same as the child answer: both things are true, and we keep trying.
That is a very adult way of answering. Yes. Because the adult answer to COP is the same as the child answer: both things are true, and we keep trying.
Both things are true, and we keep trying.
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