COP17 Approaches. No One Cares.

We're 5 days away from the Durban Climate Conference, or COP17 as it's known. COP stands for 'Conference of the Parties', but I prefer the term I heard on Radio Ecoshock a couple of weeks ago: Conference of the Polluters.

No one is expecting anything from COP17. There will be no agreements signed. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from NGOs and protesters, but it will fall on deaf ears. Governments have all but given up on these conferences actually producing anything substantial along the lines of the Kyoto agreement.

China doesn't like handcuffing themselves to any agreements, and the US and Canada actively block them, so the rest of the world has taken to throwing their hands up in the air and deciding that nothing can be done.

I've always maintained that something can be done. Sign an agreement between those countries who actually want to save our way of life by doing something about climate change. Then, don't trade with those countries who don't sign. Okay, it may be a fantasy that we won't buy Coca Cola or Nike products until the US does something abut climate change, but wouldn't it be nice to at least make the US, China and Canada irrelevant to negotiations, rather than making it all about them?

Incidentally, it's despairing to see that the COP17 website promotes an airline on almost every page. Shame on them.