Tag: Coca-Cola

One big climate COP-out

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Image: Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe reading a speech in 2021 delivered electronically at COP26. Source: Facebook/Ministry of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Tuvalu Government

The United Nations Secretary-General set the tone for the 27th annual COP climate conference by saying the world was “on the highway to climate hell”. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg no doubt agreed, earlier describing the two-week climate conference in Egypt as an exercise in ‘green-washing’.

Fair to say the representatives of 198 nations who gathered in Glasgow last year for COP26 have not done as much about climate change mitigation as we’d all hoped.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC he would not be attending the COP27 conference at Egyptian resort town Sharm el-Sheikh.

“This COP will be all about implementation,” he said, delegating the task to Climate Minister Chris Bowen and other representatives.

Team Albanese have made big strides in Australia’s climate policy since being elected six months ago. Albanese is banking on mending fences by backing his government’s turnaround of the Morrison administration’s poor climate record.

Unlike British PM Rishi Sunak, who has been forced by political pressure to reverse his decision to stay at home, Albanese justified his absence, saying “I can’t be in all places at once.”

“I have a very busy schedule of parliament, then the international conferences, then back to parliament again, making sure that our agenda gets through and that includes our agenda on clean energy and taking action on climate change.”

COP is a shorthand acronym for an alphabet soup of descriptors – the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Despite this being the 27th year this global talkfest has been held, there have been many promises and commitments, yet little has been done to slow the global ravages of climate change.

Despite Egypt’s police state reputation, climate activists are there and some have already said harsh things about COP27’s major sponsor, Coca-Cola.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it was baffling for COP27 to choose the “world’s biggest plastic polluter” as a sponsor, given that “99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels”.

On what it cost to stage COP26 in Glasgow last year, this year’s conference in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh will probably top $200 million. It is clearly now an annual ‘Expo” that wealthier countries want to host. It’s expensive to participate, with organisations being charged as much as $500,000 to hire a pavilion. More than 30,000 people registered to attend this year, representing governments, businesses, NGOs, and civil society groups.

Australia’s Climate Council, which has sent several delegates to Cop27, reminded us that Australia signed the Glasgow Pact in 2021.

The Pact called for countries to bring forward a 50% emissions reduction plan to COP27 and increase on that target during this decade.

Australia may be pressured to finally sign the Global Methane Pledge and other important deals it avoided under the Morrison Government.

Key issues which will emerge at COP27 include “loss and damage” financing. This refers to developing countries at the frontlines of the crisis who are suffering from the consequences of climate change. As one example, the low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu, population 12,000, is suffering serious consequences from the CO2 emissions of others.

The Climate Council says countries like Australia, which have built considerable wealth off the back of fossil fuels, can and must do more to support climate action beyond their shores.

Back in 2009, developed countries committed to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries, but have consistently fallen short. Australia would need to lift its annual contribution by 10 times to fulfil its share towards this global goal, the Climate Council said.

The UNFCCC Secretariat is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. There has been almost universal commitment to join, with 198 countries signed up. Until this year, Australia was seen as a laggard, to the extent that former PM Scott Morrison was initially not invited to attend COP26.

Heads of State and Government attended the Climate Implementation Summit at COP27 on November 7 and 8 with a high-level meeting for climate Ministers from 15-18 November.

The main aim of the UNFCCC is to uphold the 2015 Paris Agreement. As we all should know, this bare-minimum pledge was to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Seven years on though, only 190 of the 195 signatories have ratified the agreement.

The ultimate objective is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The sticking point, I suspect, is the proviso that this is done in a time frame which “allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development”.

The Guardian’s pre-conference report posed some scenarios for the Australian delegation, led by climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen. The Guardian’s environment writer Adam Morton said Australia can expect questions about what it is prepared to support on finance and loss and damage. Questions could be asked about the Australian government’s exit (under the Morrison government) of the green climate fund. Morton expects Australia to be under close scrutiny due to its bid to host COP in 2026.

There will (or should be) an examination of Australia’s support for an expansion in fossil fuel exports, at odds with its green policies at home.

The UN secretary-general’s COP27 opening address, where he twisted the meaning of the famous AC/DC song, was not wildly inaccurate. He was no doubt reflecting on the ongoing effects of flooding in Pakistan.

Since mid-June, unprecedented floods in Pakistan have killed 1,717 people. The floods were caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers; these events following a severe heat wave. All are linked to climate change, with poor urban planning playing a significant role.

In Australia, we might make pale comparisons with the inundated New South Wales town of Lismore, battered by one flood after another. There is talk of writing the town off and rebuilding it on higher ground. Many of those badly affected by the floods have not waited to find out, relocating to supposedly less flood -prone towns (like Warwick).

The agenda-setters for climate change mitigation may well be the world’s largest manufacturing industries. International vehicle manufacturer Volvo chose this week to announce it would stop making fossil fuel-driven cars in Australia by 2026. This is unlikely to stampede the manufacturers of cheaper, mass market vehicles. All the same, it is a line drawn in the sand. We must hope that rising tides do not wipe it away too soon.

As for Tuvalu’s social media post (above) which went viral last year, it is probably not much of an exaggeration. Climate change in Tuvalu is particularly threatening for the long-term habitability of the island state. The average height of the islands is less than 2m above sea level, which has been rising at 3mm per year, about twice the global average. On a per capita basis, its CO2 emissions are 0.9 metric tonnes, compared to between 15mt and 17mt for developed countries.

As Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner sarcastically comments, in a pithy song of the same name:

So it’s toodle loo to Tuvalu, it’s not that we don’t care

But I can’t support this warming crap, taxes and despair

We can’t reduce our standards, two houses, shares and land

So its Toodle loo to Tuva Lu, I hope you’ll understand.

 

 

Things go better with Santa

By Guest Writer Phil Dickie*

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Photo by Susan Brown: A sumptuous Saint Nicholas awaits customers in a Berlin department store. He’ll sit with the kids, but you have to take your own photographs.

Think Santa Claus. Think an overweight gent with a white beard wearing a distinctive red coat with white fur trim and a hat to match.

In the English speaking world, that’s it. But while the tubby one is certainly known in continental Europe, he is not alone. Often, he is not even there in the Christmas accessory departments and when you make discrete inquiries you might be told “Oh, you mean the Coca-Cola Santa Claus.”

A rough census through a well-stocked Swiss Christmas department turned up around 40 distinct Santas, absolutely none in the generic costume of the English speaking world. Most had white whiskery bits, but a goatee could be as acceptable as a flowing white beard. Some were even thin, many sported gold and silver threads and autumn colours were certainly popular.

While we have opted for the single depiction Santa, Europe continues to provide some support for the rich, varied and multilayered traditions that lie between a couple of fourth century bishops and a Coca-Cola casting couch. Our Santa, it must be said, doesn’t look very saintly anymore. On the other hand, some of the multiple Santas of Europe also would look much more at home in a pagan romp through the woods than they would preaching from a pulpit.

It is generally accepted that the original St Nicholas was the fourth century Bishop of Myra. A few remnants of Myra have somehow survived the lack of development controls on building greenhouses around the modern Turkish town of Kale – including the mostly Byzantine elements of the basilica where St Nicholas, benefactor of seamen and prostitutes, was buried in 343 AD.

But St Nicholas is no longer there. Freebooting Italians removed his bones, or at least some bones, in the 11th century. Freebooters from Bari just beat freebooters from Venice with an identical plan, so it was Bari that got to follow the usual trajectory of development in those days – bung the bones in a new crypt, build a new basilica overhead and sit back and enjoy the pilgrim trade. Maybe the Venetians were still sore about this when they diverted a crusade against the Muslims into sacking Christian Byzantium (now Muslim Istanbul) a couple of centuries later.

St Nicholas, meantime, spent the centuries appearing, disappearing and performing unexpected miracles all over Europe. To give the pilgrim trade something to fasten on to in a suitably lucrative way, churches, shrines and even villages dedicated to St Nicholas sprang up. But you have got to be careful. A Swiss St Niklaus kirch is just as likely to be for the 15th century soldier, statesman and saint who helped fit the pope up with a Swiss bodyguard. Having arranged a powerful friend, he then advised the infant nation to prosper by leaving the neighbours alone and staying out of their wars.

Other times, the stories are deliciously obscure. The Matterhorn Valley church of St Niklaus (of Myra) was meant to be constructed safely in the middle of a field but the builders kept losing their tools. Then a boy survived a rockfall, exclaimed “Holy Nicholas wouldn’t permit it” and the church was built on the site of this miracle. The church has had an accident prone existence ever since, being flattened by an avalanche in 1720. The 36-metre steeple of the much rebuilt church is now dressed up as the world’s tallest Santa Claus each December – but still looks more bishop than billboard.

Others will tell you that the ancestor of Santa Claus wasn’t St Nicholas of Myra but Bishop Basil of Caesarea. The Roman Empire had many towns called Caesarea but this one is also in modern day Turkey, not that far north of Myra as it happens. Basil, who lived around the same time as Nicholas, is rather better documented in early church records as an actual preaching, politicking and existing cleric than his rival.

In central Northern Europe, children allegedly began receiving mid-winter gifts from a former demon who had turned virtuous under the influence of a usually un-named saint. This may well have been a Christian rewrite job on earlier tales that the undisciplined Norse god Wodin was also uncharacteristically kind to children when the seasons were hard.

A mix of the Mediterranean and the northern traditions is believed to have provided the basis of both the English Father Christmas and the Dutch Sinterklasse. Sinterklasse emigrated to New Amsterdam, and Father Christmas presumably followed when the American city changed its name to New York.

Not even Coca-Cola claims to have created Santa Claus in the modern image, although he was certainly popularised in 1930s advertising designed to lift the mid-winter appeal of refrigerated soft drinks. Coca-Cola, pundits will be delighted to know, was mainly responsible for the girth of the red-robed one, although the artists were trying to convey jolliness rather than the consequences of drinking too much Coke.

The American Santa then travelled everywhere that Coke did, which was everywhere US service personnel were sent or stationed during and after the Second World War. In other words, nearly everywhere there is.

Coke’s artists were working up an image that had been built up by a succession of earlier American poets and artists who transformed Sinterklaas and his English relative into Santa Claus. A satirist gave him a wagon in 1812, a poet turned that into a sleigh in 1821 and another poet added eight reindeer and a preference for diving down chimneys a year later. Santa gave up smoking (a pipe) in 1849, got the basic costume from a commercial artist in 1863 and a North Pole address from another poet in 1869.

“Which Santa sells best?” I ventured to ask Maurice Schilliger, proprietor of the Swiss store where I conducted my census. He wasn’t sure. “I do design, not commerce,” he said. Maybe, but maybe he also majored in diplomacy.

“Er, where are all these Santas made?” I asked. I was thinking, I must confess, of some vast factory floor in China where the proletarian masses are stitching up Santas to any requirement.

“The North Pole,” he said. Of course. Where else.

*Phil Dickie is an expatriate Australian journalist and author best known for ‘outing’ corrupt police and politicians in Queensland. Together with an ABC Four Corners programme, his series of investigative articles led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the 1980s and won him a Gold Walkley award. Phil, now based near Geneva, Switzerland, recently concluded a five-year stint as inaugural global issues manager with WWF International and is again available for interesting assignments or employment.

www.melaleucamedia.com.au

(Bob and She Who Is 10% Irish are on holiday!)