Tim Blair: Glasgow will be the perfect city to host the world’s climate activists

Scotland’s largest city has too many rats, too many gangs, too much garbage and far too little carbon dioxide. It’s the perfect place, then, for a climate conference, writes Tim Blair.

Pity the poor environmental activist who, after years of dutiful earnestness and scolding, finally scores an invitation to the biggest eco-shindig of them all.

Our lucky activist is bound for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP26. Hooray!

Except this year’s COPfest isn’t in sunny Madrid (COP25), exotic Katowice, Poland (COP24), cultured Bonn, Germany (COP23) or hippie-friendly Marrakech, Morocco (COP22).

Nor will it be held in beautiful Paris (COP21) where Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy memorably feasted on a dish she described as “duck le orange”, which sounds like something you might order in the NSW Central Tablelands.

Street artists paint a mural on a wall opposite the COP26 climate summit venue in Glasgow. Picture: AFP

No, this year’s big climate celebration will be hosted by Glasgow, Scotland, just a few weeks prior to the onset of winter.

Glasgow isn’t the most attractive destination at the best of times. Presently, you’d quickly choose a Victorian-style lockdown over a visit to Scotland’s largest city.

The place, as Stephen Daisley writes in the Spectator, is “a city in crisis where streets are overflowing with rubbish”.

And soon, to repeat Daisley’s point, with international climate delegates.

“Pavements strewn with household waste are a common sight,” Daisley wrote earlier this month.

“Residents routinely post images on social media of the city centre and its outer-lying suburbs covered in ­detritus.

“Glasgow’s bin men are appalled and characterise the situation as a health and safety breach: they cite the risk of Weil’s disease, which can be transmitted to humans through ­rodent urine.

“So far this year four Glasgow bin men have been attacked by rats.”

The Glasgow meeting will look to accelerate global action to meet the Paris Agreement goals of capping global warming at below two degrees Celsius. Picture: AFP

And if the rats don’t get you, some of Glasgow’s livelier citizens possibly will.

The city is not nearly as deadly as it was in past decades, when Glasgow was known as western Europe’s murder capital, but the Wikipedia page listing Glasgow’s gangs is still so long that it has to be divided into geographical and suburban subsections.

In previous years, COP26 might have referred to the minimum number of officers required to subdue a brawl between East Glasgow’s Duke Street Fleet and Greater Pollok’s Housy Mad Sqwad.

There are other problems, too. Glasgow and the rest of the UK are currently dealing with an energy crisis, which isn’t the ideal backdrop for a climate conference aiming to reduce the use of reliable fossil-derived energy sources.

The energy crisis has come about because winds are not blowing, meaning that wind farm power generators across the UK are even more motionless and useless than usual.

And why might the winds have stopped? The Times of London recently took a guess: “The cause of the decline is not known but could be linked to long-term ‘global stilling’ trends of decreased surface wind speed, perhaps caused by climate change.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is going to the Glasgow conference. Picture: Getty Images

“Less wind has a direct impact on the amount of electricity that can be generated by wind farms.”

Right. So climate change not only causes more intense and destructive storms, as every Glasgow delegate will tell you, but it also causes the winds to soften to a point where they can’t even spin a wind turbine’s Chinese-made blades.

Is there nothing climate change cannot accomplish?

The energy-sapping effects of “global stilling” and the measures required to combat it complete a perfect climate lunacy loop. Let’s take it step by step:

One: Britain goes big on wind turbines in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from traditional power sources.

Two: The wind don’t blow and the power don’t flow.

Three: A subsequent massive ­increase in demand for natural gas as a power source drives wholesale gas prices up by 250 per cent since ­January.

Four: CF Fertilisers, a US-owned British fertiliser business that also produces 60 per cent of Britain’s carbon dioxide for commercial use, suspends production because high gas prices have made the business unprofitable.

Five: Carbon dioxide is used as a preservative for meat packaging, for adding fizz to soft drinks and also to destroy bacteria in vegetables. Without reliable supplies of commercial carbon dioxide, Britain faces a food shortage.

Six: The British government, which spent millions of pounds to cut carbon dioxide emissions, is now providing millions of pounds in subsidies to CF Fertilisers so it can produce carbon dioxide.

They’d better be quick about it. The makers of Irn-Bru, Scotland’s preferred carbonated soft drink, last month warned of limited supplies unless the carbon dioxide shortage was addressed.

Glasgow, home city for the upcoming International Climate Conference is beset by problems like gangs, rats and a garbage crisis.

“If the situation worsens across Europe then we could be impacted,” Iru-Bru’s producers announced.

“We have worked hard to build resilience into our CO2 supply chain over a number of years. However, these are quite unprecedented ­circumstances.”

Curse that damn global stilling.

Back in Paris during an earlier climate conference, the ACF’s Kelly O’Shanassy enjoyed a glass of champagne with her “duck le orange”.

Good luck finding an equivalent local favourite beverage in Glasgow to accompany your trough of raw mutton and broken glass.

Perhaps Glasgow-bound climate activists should reconsider their journey. Cairo in 2022 for COP27 might be a better option.

It has even more rubbish and rats, but at least there’s plenty of carbon ­dioxide.