Talkfest begins as Gaza burns

It's that time of the year again. No, not Christmas. It's time for another COP summit. The acronym is short for "Conference of the Parties" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That is, all those who say they really, truly do want to do something about climate change. The 197"parties" include all UN member states and the European Union.

- Cathrin Schaer

Once a year for the past 28 years, this group has been getting together to try to unify global efforts on climate change. This year's talkfest in Dubai features a cast of more than 70,000 delegates in a sci-fi cityscape on a rehydrated desert. It ends on December 12.

Of course, Germany is attending. Germany's chief negotiator is Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock, also a Green Party member of the Bundestag, and her stated goal is to convince other nations to switch to renewable energies and to demonstrate German solidarity with less-developed, less-polluting countries unequally impacted by climate change. The latter includes financing a mitigation and adaptation fund with about €6 billion (about NZ$11b) annually.

This is the plan - even though, despite all the Birkenstocks, bike-riding and recycling, Germany is not actually reducing its own carbon emissions as promised. In the at-times rancorous negotiations, somebody is bound to point that out.