It’s easy to be cynical about climate talks, but Cop is the best we’ve got

As the annual global climate change convention begins, senior climate correspondent Louise Boyle outlines the messiness and necessity of Cop28

COP28 Climate Contradictions (AP)

It’s perfectly reasonable to question the point of Cop28, the annual get-together intended to advance the goal of keeping the global temperature within the liveable 1.5 degrees Celsius limit.

Progress has been incremental since the giddy-high of the 2015 Paris Agreement, when leaders clasped hands and promised to hasten the decline of their country’s respective carbon footprints from cooking the planet.

Eight years on, we are facing a “deafening cacophony of broken records”, as Professor Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation, put it during Cop28’s opening session in Dubai on Thursday.