October 21, 2021

Oops! As we lead up to the COP26 climate summit (the same one Joe Biden wants to impress), someone leaked a huge cache of documents to Greenpeace UK, who shared them with the BBC. Short version: Countries are trying to change a scientific report on how to tackle climate change. Among those countries who want their fossil fuels include Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Australia. It's like the report was one big burn book and all those mean girls are talking about them behind their backs!

Also, some wealthy nations (wink, wink *Switzerland*) are bitching about having to cough up to help poorer states move to greener technologies THAT WILL KEEP ALL OF US FROM DYING IN A GIANT WALL OF FLAME. Oh, I'm sorry, am I overreacting?

The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other interested parties to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change.

I know you will be shocked that the same regime that literally chopped up a Washington Post journalist and threw him away is throwing their weight around:

An adviser to the Saudi oil ministry demands "phrases like 'the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales…' should be eliminated from the report".

[...] Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, requests the UN scientists delete their conclusion that "the focus of decarbonisation efforts in the energy systems sector needs to be on rapidly shifting to zero-carbon sources and actively phasing out fossil fuels".

Australia, the world's major coal exporter, is very upset that the report mentions they were doing the horizontal tango with fossil fuel lobbyists:

Australia asks IPCC scientists to delete a reference to analysis of the role played by fossil fuel lobbyists in watering down action on climate in Australia and the US. Opec also asks the IPCC to "delete 'lobby activism, protecting rent extracting business models, prevent political action'."

Brazil and Argentina had a sad, too:

Brazil and Argentina, two of the biggest producers of beef products and animal feed crops in the world, argue strongly against evidence in the draft report that reducing meat consumption is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, the climate got really, really bad and expensive to clean up all over the world but no one knows how it happened BUT IT WASN'T US, YOU'RE A BUNCH OF POOPYHEAD LIARS.

I feel despair. I think we all need a pep talk from my favorite climate scientist, Katherine Hayhoe:

Can you help us out?

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