Beware the duplicitous – Viva!life 87

They don’t tell you lies and they don’t tell you the truth – their words are designed to fool you. Read between the lines to understand who’s taking you for a sucker

Featured in Viva!Life 87/Spring 2024

I’m no royalist but I gave a whoop of delight when the High Court found that Mirror Group Newspapers had hacked Prince Harry’s phone and that the Mirror’s one-time editor, Gob Almighty Piers Morgan, was involved in it up to his neck.

Morgan responded instantly with his oft-repeated denial: “I have never hacked a phone, I have never asked anyone to hack a phone.” Those words are as duplicitous as you can get. The first thing any editor asks when a journalist comes to him with a juicy scoop is: “Does it stand up – what are your sources?” Without verification, the story doesn’t run! So, of course HE didn’t hack any phones but he approved it.

There are more important things in the world than Piers Morgan (although he would probably disagree), not least the pass the parcel of COP28 and saving the global environment. With as much fanfare and hyperbole as a virgin birth – “A climate emergency is here, but so is hope!” – it was Dubai’s turn to host the UN’s Conference of the Parties. And who did they choose as president? Why, none other than Sultan al-Jaber.

A world-renowned ecologist? Not exactly – a politician from the United Arab Emirates and chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which plans to double its oil output by 2027. The BBC reported that al Jaber intended to use his COP presidency to strike oil deals with various nations. He denied the allegation, of course, but the oil industry seemed pretty convinced, with the number of oil lobbyists attending the conference tripling since last year to 2,500. Meat and dairy lobbyists also sensed they might be onto a good thing and trebled their numbers to 150.

Before the conference, al-Jaber was eloquent about what is needed: “Nothing short of transformational progress will do!” Just how duplicitous those words are became clear when, near the end of the conference, he was challenged by Mary Robinson, ex-president of Ireland, to show her the road map for phasing out his own oil interests. Oh boy, he didn’t like that – being challenged and by a woman. A brand-new experience, I suspect.

“There is no science indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5ºC unless you want to take the world back into caves,” said the sultan. But Mary Robinson persisted and al-Jaber’s anger showed: “Stop the pointing of fingers. Stop it!,” he yelled.

And then came the final declaration, recognising the need to ‘transition’ away from fossil fuels. Hooray, that’ll do the trick! How do we transition away? Don’t know! How quickly? Don’t know! Who will check it?! Don’t know! Is it legally binding? No! But we can trust the giant fossil fuel producers – they won’t let us down, will they?

Nearly every one of them has issued reassuring duplicitous words about the need for change while at the same time planning to up production. The output of all the big producers, according to the UN’s global stocktake report, is scheduled to be far greater in 2030 than it is now. So that’s what ‘transitioning’ means!

Only four producing countries are moving in the opposite (right) direction – China, Norway, Germany and the UK. Well, good for us…! But these figures were compiled before our own Government decided that the public had tired of trying to save the world and authorised 100 new oil-drilling licences for the North Sea, including the big Rosebank field – “In order to secure our energy supplies”! One minister is reported as saying: “We’re gonna squeeze out every last drop of oil for Britain!” That’s really duplicitous as all the oil will be sold on the open market and the UK will have absolutely no claim on it.

The Government has also approved a new coal mine at Woodhouse in Cumbria, run by West Cumbria Mining, which has a degree in duplicity. “World Leading ‘Net Zero’ Steelmaking Coal,”, it shouts excitedly. Wow – fancy that! What they actually mean is that production will be net zero (or so they say) – the coal itself will produce 250 million tonnes of carbon over 30 years. I think that deserves a Duplicity Award!

Other duplicitous words you need to be aware of are ‘carbon offsetting’ and ‘carbon capture’. The evidence is that neither works and are merely schemes to allow polluters to continue polluting.

Privileged, right-wing newspaper columnists such as Julia Hartley Brewer have coined their own duplicitous words, saying that as the UK contributes only one per cent of global emissions, there’s no point in us even trying to reduce carbon – merely a piddle in the ocean, so to speak! However, many other countries contribute similar amounts to the UK and we are in the top 20 of polluters.

As far as meat and dairy consumption goes and its impact on the environment, the conference jettisoned pass the parcel for blind man’s bluff. A refusal to see the science and a groping around after anything but the truth. It got off to a great start with Jason Weller, chief ‘sustainability’ officer for one of the world’s biggest meat producers, Brazilian-based JBS, claiming “…the myopic focus on reducing meat consumption does not reflect reality or the science”. Let’s be clear, Jason’s sustainability brief is about profits not the environment.

You must have grown tired of my saying that the meat and dairy industry is borrowing tactics from the tobacco industry but it’s true and the global environmental investigations outlet, DesSmog, has repeated the claim. The industry’s tactics include downplaying their own greenhouse gas emissions, attacking the science on how livestock farming is driving the climate crisis and challenging the benefits of plant-based alternatives to meat.

I’ll give you an example. Harvard University’s landmark study showing how eating less meat could benefit the planet and human health was dismissed by the US-based Animal Agriculture Alliance and the France-based International Meat Secretariat as “elitist”, “biased” and “not scientifically well-founded”.

Worse than that, the industry is now pretending that farming animals is part of the solution to global heating and our own Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB – a quango funded by the industry but answerable to Defra) is leading the charge.

“Managing livestock effectively can sequester tons of atmospheric carbon in soils,” it says, with a completely straight face. Oxford University blew this claim out of the water four years ago with global research on over 40,000 farms. It’s nonsense!

Let’s be clear – the planet is in a battle for survival and time is short. It is a conflict between intelligence, science and concern on one side – stupidity, commercial interests and no science whatsoever on the other. However, over 1,400 members of a new environmental body, Scientist Rebellion, from over 30 countries, have now spoken out, confirming what’s at stake: “If we continue on our current path, large areas of our planet will be uninhabitable, leading to millions of displaced populations, food insecurity, and intense political conflicts across the globe.”

Ah well, maybe this year’s COP29 will sort it all out. Don’t hold your breath! It will be held in authoritarian Azerbaijan and presided over by Mukhtar Babayev, a long-serving director of the country’s oil and gas company, SOCARocar, which plans to increase production of fossil fuels by a third over the next decade. As Collin Rees of Oil Change International says: “Appointing another lifelong oil man to lead… pushes us closer to the abyss.”

Ah well, there’s always COP30.