COP25 Madrid: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and Why I Want to Go

The drift towards near-term human extinction must be averted at all costs.

I confess. I am a COP junkie. In Copenhagen I stood for hours outside, in a blizzard, waiting for a special pass when normal passes were suddenly restricted mid-conference. I was in the Blue Zone cheering when the Paris Agreement was gaveled. I remember heartbreaking impasses in Cancun, Marrakech, Bonn and all the others. I know the shortcomings of Paris, the cheating with the Clean Development Mechanism, the scandalous manipulation of ignorance underpinning Sustainable Development Goal #8 (right to economic growth) and absurd framing of SDG#1 (eradicate poverty), as if poverty were a disease rather than something implicit in SDG#8, but all that hasn’t stopped me from going back for more.

I surely am aware that Sustainable Development is an oxymoron when one extends ecosystem thinking to planetary systems. In nature, nothing sustains. Rather, there is a progression from juvenile growth to carrying capacity, regenerative, steady-state systems, disturbance, decay, collapse, and repeat. We should never aspire to sustainability unless we first ask, what is it you wish to sustain? If what you wish is an impossible USAnian lifestyle for all imposed by militarism and nuclear weapons, well, good luck with that because that is unsustainable from…