Op- Whether we’re 5-2 or 5-3 down it’s all about the optics at Cop26

Bertie Booster wanted to share his excitement as the world of the rich and powerful played out in public.

Make sense of it if you can. Yesterday morning the time was one minute to midnight and humanity was 5-1 down to climate change. Today the time must be at least 50 seconds to midnight and we have clawed back a goal. Or possibly two. Presumably the second one is still being checked by VAR. So the score is either 5-2 or 5-3. Boris Johnson didn’t seem to know which as he prepared to leave Cop26 in Glasgow.

Though he did think we were probably heading into extra time. At least that seemed to be the gist of what Johnson had to say, though it was hard to tell as he gives no sign of knowing how football works. In the clash of metaphors, the first casualty is clarity.

There again it wasn’t entirely obvious why the prime minister had called a press conference in the first place as he didn’t really have anything much to say. The only logical conclusion was that he had got a bit carried away. He had clearly come to Glasgow expecting the conference to be a total disaster and was relieved to discover that it had all gone a bit better than he expected. Bertie Booster was now cautiously optimistic that world leaders would find enough they could agree on to make it look as if some progress had been made and he wanted to share his excitement with someone.

Not that he wanted to raise hopes massively. But 122 nations had agreed to tackle deforestation, 90% of the world was committed to net zero, big strides forward had been made on methane and the developed countries were only going to be a little bit late in making good on an unambitious target of giving £100bn a year to developing countries. But that all had to be a good thing to have achieved in just two days, didn’t it? At which point Boris relapsed into his James Bond fantasies and started talking about possibly cutting the right wires to defuse the bomb.

Understandably the media didn’t entirely share the prime minister’s optimism. Many of the reporters have been to rather more Cop summits than Boris and have a better idea of how these things work. They know the bottom line for many of the world leaders is to come up with a few eye-catching headlines at the beginning of the conference so they can then nip back home – after congratulating each other on how much they had done to save the planet.

Whether anything changed was neither here nor there. It was all about the optics. For 48 hours or so the private world of the rich and powerful was played out in public. So we had Boris hailing prime minister Narendra Modi as a hero of climate change because he had committed India to net zero by 2070. Which was at least 20 years too late as the planet would have burned by then. Any idea of taking the game into extra time was for the birds with that sort of target. But Modi had to be praised. Because he would then in turn praise Boris.

And everyone deferred to Jeff Bezos. Because the founder of Amazon had promised $2bn to save the Amazon. No matter that he could have easily doubled that level of funding without feeling the pinch. At Cop26, generosity is a relative term. But the organisers couldn’t have been more pleased to have him and his support. So no one dared question Jeff on the hypocrisy of his recent venture into space tourism. Jeff’s carbon footprint cannot be questioned because he’s got so much cash to give. Rather it’s indulged, as he went on to say how life-changing his 10-minute space flight had been. “Oh Mr Bezos, you’re so wonderful,” sobbed the compere. See me, feel me, touch me.

And it was this “Lifestyle par Jeff” that Boris had fallen for and on which he got called out. How come no one was talking about China? Without the active engagement of the world’s biggest polluter everyone was wasting their time. This was like being 5-2 down seconds from the end of the game and playing without two of your star strikers. Johnson didn’t even pretend to have an answer. Things would just work out somehow because they always had in the past. Even if they hadn’t. The trick was to believe.

The questions didn’t ease up. How could the world trust Brazil to keep its promises given Jair Bolsonaro’s track record of destroying the rainforest? Boris shrugged. He was sure the Brazilian president would keep his word this time and besides, people would stop buying goods sourced from Brazil if he didn’t. Dream on. Then reality bit. The developing countries were already saying that none of this was enough. They faced annihilation if global temperatures weren’t restricted to a 1.5C rise and even with the new agreements we were nowhere near that. And the developed world needed to stump up far more than the £100bn a year that it was already not providing.

“Look, I don’t want to sugar-coat this,” said Bertie Booster. But he did. As that’s what he always does. He can’t cope with too much reality. Just like so many others at Cop26, it’s the illusion of having made a difference that counts. With that, Boris left to go home. He did feel a bit guilty about the private jet, but it was a lot smaller than some other world leaders’ planes, and he could always plant a tree in Downing Street. That should offset the carbon emissions.

• A Farewell to Calm by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £9.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

2 November 2021

The Guardian