In the face of all this frenetic inactivity, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, and yes, lots of lucrative jet-setting jobs for the boys and girls including in his case with the UNFCCC not UNEP, just said COP29 in Azerbaijan in November “must be the stand-and-deliver COP”. Which has a certain logic to it, although if he had any research staff they might have warned him that “Stand and deliver!” was “said in the past by highwaymen when they stopped a carriage… to demand objects of value from the travellers” until America’s colourful hillbilly culture gave us the phrase “Reach for the sky” instead. So a threat not outreach, albeit one he might not be very well placed to carry though on.

Apparently an adopted Canadian, Kentucky-born Billy Miner, the “Gentleman Bandit” who carried out British Columbia’s first-ever train robbery, came up with the later, bland but efficient “Hands up.” But we digress. The point is, why are they all so keen to repeat something they just swallowed hard and admitted wasn’t working? Namely making pseudo-pledges that deliver pseudo-results.

Speaking of reaching for the sky, the phrase also has a very different meaning, to set ambitious goals, to aspire to excellence. And of course when your goal is to change the composition of the atmosphere in order to make the weather superb, it’s literal as well.

Also speaking of reaching for the sky, as COP conferences gradually resigned themselves to being unable to agree on any dramatic action to stop climate change, and the models quietly insisted that even dramatic action wouldn’t accomplish anything worthy of a headline, the focus switched to making rich countries pay vast sums to poor countries to help them mitigate the supposed impact of deteriorating weather using the same sorts of policy approaches that made them poor countries to begin with. So the notion of staging a highway robbery is somewhat appropriate… or would be if those policy approaches had not also resulted in rich countries having pretty much all the effective weapons as well, so the basic notion is to say “Hands up” while waving your own empty hands and pockets at someone with both money and guns.

Thus Stiell’s unfortunate metaphor continued: “recognising that climate finance is core business to save the global economy and billions of lives and livelihoods from rampaging climate impacts.” Rampaging, no less.

Now he tried to sound cheerful:

“According to the OECD, in 2022 developed countries provided and mobilised more than 100 billion dollars in climate finance to developing countries. We got this far because first-movers and smart governments – who had the means – seized their chance. They saw the opportunity and grabbed it. But relative to where we need to be – this is nowhere near enough.”

Smart governments? Meaning what exactly? Are they making money off this “opportunity”? Well, no, since apparently everything is being rampaged, what with the invention of the hurricane and the fact that “even those who’ve avoided direct damages have been hit hard by inflation as supply chains are blocked and broken.” So climate change causes inflation too. There’s nothing it can’t do, even highway robbery.

Speaking of which:

“we can only prevent the climate crisis from decimating all economies – including the largest – if every nation has the means to slash greenhouse gas pollution and boost climate resilience. So, we know trillions more are needed.”

Trillions. Hand it over.

Or else, because:

“Doing so is a crucial investment to protect the global economy, and will be a fraction of the costs every nation will pay if we allow the climate crisis to keep running rampant, devastating more and more lives and livelihoods every day, every week, every month and every year.”

So it’s your money or your life, apparently. (A strange phrase, in that no robber who uttered it ever meant that if you do make me shoot you, I’ll leave your full wallet on your corpse.) And we don’t mean just some of your money:

“Just this week the World Bank announced more concessional lending for climate. And the IMF is looking at ways to incorporate climate action and risks right across their work. This is good news. But incremental increases won’t lead to an exponential surge of investment and green growth. On climate finance, we have a need for speed, and without much larger scale, all economies will fail.”

All economies will fail. Meaning what again? What does a “failed” economy look like? If the economy of Upper Volta “failed” how would you tell? Even if it renamed itself Burkina Faso in 1984 and ditched a national anthem including (translated) such poetic gems as:

“The work of your burning ground/ Endless will soak the ardent hearts,/ And the virtues of your children/ The girdle of a triumphant diadem.”

Incidentally the new one starts:

“Against the humiliating bondage of a thousand years/ Rapacity came from afar to subjugate them for a hundred years./ Against the cynical malice in the shape/ Of neo-colonialism and its petty local servants.”

Not that they’re bitter. Though the final verse starts “Popular revolution our nourishing sap” which helps explain why the place is such a mess that the Wikipedia article on it doesn’t even have a section for its economy. But we digress.

The point is that after noting that “So many countries are facing debt crises that amount to fiscal straight-jackets, making it near-impossible to invest in climate action” Stiell proceeds to reach for the sky:

“We must fund a new generation of national climate plans. To protect the progress we made at COP28, and convert the pledges in the UAE Consensus - to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, boost adaptation and transition away from fossil fuels - into real-world, real-economy results. And we must get the Loss and Damage Fund working fully, dispersing money to those who need it the most.”

Apart from that list, things are going great. How great? Well, when COP28 concluded in December 2023 the UNFCCC put out a press release “COP28 Agreement Signals ‘Beginning of the End’ of the Fossil Fuel Era” which quoted none other than Simon Stiell, in his closing speech, that:

“Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end. Now all governments and businesses need to turn these pledges into real-economy outcomes, without delay.”

They didn’t. So they should. This time for sure.