This COP is a load
Feedback has seen the latest round of international climate negotiations, COP29, marred by the struggle in Azerbaijan. In a previous life, we covered a number of COPs, and we continue on most of the relevant mailing lists. That’s why we know that on November 18th, as we were writing this, the Climate Action Network’s Fossil of the Day was South Korea, only because it was blocking a deal that would have ended oil and gas subsidies by high-income countries. Yes, that would do it.
In a country like Azerbaijan, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, having a conference dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions was always going to backfire. Feedback believed that diplomacy was about understanding the motivations of others, but apparently no one guessed what the Azerbaijani government wanted. In this regard, President Ilham Aliyev oil and gas “”God’s gift” in his opening speech, and the country’s chief negotiator was filmed apparently organizing meeting to discuss fossil fuel agreements.
Then the conference really started, or rather, it didn’t. On the first day, work broke down in the first hour after several countries objected to the rest of the conference’s agenda. Then the first day passed renegotiate the agendawhile the delegates sat idly by. However, it is not that climate change is an urgent problem.
Feedback would like to think that things can only go uphill from here, but the experience of the last decade suggests otherwise. Also, we still cringe when we remember the last night of a COP we attended. It was getting late, so the deal had to be signed and the party started. But then we saw the parade of mini-diplomats carrying huge piles of pizza boxes into the negotiating room, and realized that we would be there, at best, until the early hours of the morning. Feedback does not recommend this experience, nor is it a case of caffeine intoxication.
Find your inner evil
Assistant news editor Alexandra Thompson points to an article on the psychological research repository PsyArXiv with the glorious title “What it means to be a real badass: An experimental investigation of the common concept“. Its authors, Breanna Nguy˜ên and Michael Prinzing, set out to explain what we mean when we say someone is evil. It is not obvious, they say, because both Genghis Khan and Malala Yousafzai could be considered evil, but “these two people are as different from each other as you can imagine”. Well, pretty much.
The researchers used a series of online surveys to find out what types of people did and didn’t consider. This revealed that, they say, “badass” is a two-layered concept. There is a superficial meaning that relates to being physically strong or having an “awesome presence”. But there is also a deeper inner meaning that pertains to “moral resilience and courage.”
According to the authors, Yousafzai shows this inner wickedness, while Khan is all about outer toughness. The opinion is not so certain: we read John Man’s biography of Khan and he showed remarkable courage in tight quarters. However, the inside/outside distinction seems plausible.
In our quieter moments, Feedback sometimes delights in such investigations that delve into the subtle meanings of everyday terms. The classic example is Harry Frankfurt’s book in bullfighting. Frankfurt was a philosopher who distinguished between lying – telling lies with the explicit purpose of deceiving someone – and bullshit, or telling lies regardless of whether they are true or false in order to fulfill one’s purpose.
in bullfighting it’s a useful thing to read because it takes something we all understand implicitly and makes it explicit. Once the concept is clear, it’s easier to spot the examples, which is why the June paper is clearly titled.ChatGPT is bullshit“. Also, it’s nice to have a word that is both accurate terminology and an enabler of fruitful swearing. Frankfurt, in our opinion, was evil.
Emus in flight
On November 15, CBS News reported that two “wild and untrained” Emus (is there another kind?) were on the loose in South Carolina. They had apparently escaped three months earlier, but their flight went unnoticed until 43 monkeys escaped from a medical research facility in the same state. From November 18, six of the monkeys were released. Faced with hordes of fleeing monkey catchers, reporters began searching for similar stories and found (or rather, failed to find) the wily emu.
Opinions would never be as low as a local police department, which posted “e NOT THE ONLY ONE“. But we want to echo the point made Matthew Downhour In Bluesky: “Agree if they didn’t want them to be wild and reckless why did they name them that way“? That’s a good question because, you see, the emus are called Thelma and Louise.
If the US authorities can’t recover the birds, they can take notes from the Australians, who He became famous in a short war against wild emus in 1932. it’s true the emu won the decisive conflictbut failure is the best teacher.
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