We need to accept that we are investing in our own extinction.
There is something poetic about starting the Glasgow climate summit on Diá de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead. It is the time set aside to listen to the voices of our ancestors. It is also time to stick a fork in dead tropes and move on.
I am sitting under coconut palms with my friends, having espresso and pan de muertos. The dough is from madre de masa soaked in a slurry of sour oranges overnight. Then candied chunks of the fruit are blended in and it is baked into distinctive buns that you can take apart in bite-size pieces.
Simultaneously we are monitoring Action Room 2 at the SEC park in Glasgow — the Blue Zone — by web link: https://unfccc-cop26.streamworld.de/webcast/opening-plenary-of-the-cop-followed-by-cmp-and-cma If you follow that link, by the way, you will want to scroll past the first 70 minutes to the point where Carolina Schmidt, Chile’s Minister of Environment and outgoing COP president, takes to the podium to review the progress made at the previous COP. She is speaking to a room about 10 percent full, half of those reporters. Every time there is movement between dias and podium there is a murmuration of…