Is anone listening, is anyone still reading? 

“Reports about saving the climate have become an annoying ritual. The hope of an agreement is dwindling, while greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Climate researchers, therefore, expect significant warming with uncertain consequences.”

Everyone could write this after the unfortunate outcome of COP 25 in Madrid. But No, that quote is not about the result of the climate summit in Madrid, the COP 25. Although it makes no difference, it is the assessment of the meagre outcome (was it one at all) after the 2012 climate summit in Doha. After all, the delegates there only needed one more day to achieve the same meagre result. But it could have been just as good as the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

What do we learn from it? 

The concept of summits, where more than 20,000 people meet and then go home demotivated and with or no hope, cannot be saved.

It is part of the ritual of the UN climate conferences to present the bad results in flowery words as a success.

In the future there should be meetings in “a smaller circle”.

After decades of unsuccessful climate conferences, there is no choice but to adapt to the warmer environment.

In any case a significant slowdown in change seems utopian. In view of rising CO2 emissions, we see the two-degree target as pure illusion. The two-degree policy ignores those political and social forces that have successfully blocked the UN target.