At the end of an unbearable suspense, the tens of thousands of useless climate activists gathered in Baku managed to produce three documents that are difficult to read for the layperson in me.

It was the hagglers in particular who had to work up a sweat until past the hour. The first final document, in thirty-eight points, endorses the idea that the developed countries should, by 2035, pay three times more to the non-developed countries. In other words, the 100 billion dollars a year mentioned in the 2015 Paris agreement should be increased to at least 300 billion dollars a year over the next ten years. The use of the conditional tense in this sentence is justified insofar as previous payments have not exceeded 80 billion, not every year, and it is not clear who is doing the counting. What’s more, we don’t know how much of this ‘aid’ remains as expenditure in the donor countries, or what negative impact this may have had on other development aid. I would be most grateful to anyone with verifiable information on this subject.

In livestock fairs, transactions are sealed with a handshake. None of this was observed in Baku, because neither party is bound by this courageous decision. The ‘financial institutions’ and the funds set up for this purpose are being kindly asked to do what is necessary. Remember that this 300 billion is equivalent to 0.29% of world GDP (103,000 billion dollars in 2023).

Another 44-point document concerns the global goal on adaptation to climate change. We know that we will have to adapt to a changed climate, since measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will not have any effect for a very long time – if they do, let’s not put forward any figures or dates, which would be wrong in any case – and will only stabilise the warming.

Among the key points of this document , one ‘emphasizes the importance of ensuring geographical and gender balance among the experts’ and another ‘emphasizes the importance of including traditional knowledge, knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local knowledge systems’ in this work. In fact, no objective was set, other than to identify no more than 100 indicators applicable worldwide, from which the parties (countries) will choose those that correspond to their particular conditions and are useful for monitoring progress. These indicators should, of course, ‘capture information pertaining to, inter alia, social inclusion, Indigenous Peoples, participatory processes, human rights, gender equality, migrants, children and young people, and persons with disabilities’. The attentive reader is still waiting for the word ‘climate’ in this list. Otherwise, nothing more important than this verbiage, except that the participants are encouraged to continue to participate assiduously.

The third document to mark the history of global climate change concerns ‘mitigation ambition and implementation work programme’. Nothing is decided in its 16 points, but there is talk of a project on ‘Cities: buildings and urban systems’ to be carried out in good international collaboration between stakeholders, knowing that no one size fits all, and to be done ‘in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty and inequality’.

This is the result of the ‘entre-soi’ of a cohort of national delegates mixed with all kinds of lobbies, green and less ripe, and harassed by journalists looking for a buzz. It seems, however, that the congress had no fun setting out its pious wishes.

All that for the sake of this! How much longer will we tolerate the activism of these useless people?

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