The very first in the annual series of UN climate summits was held in Berlin in 1995, and was called the conference of parties, or COP1. Climate change activists had high hopes for these annual meetings, but in the years that followed, climate change has only got worse. Since that first meeting, annual carbon dioxide emissions have grown by about 60%, and the United States has set off a boom in fossil fuel extraction, taking back its status as the world's largest producer of oil and gas. In fact, they own the largest pipeline network in the world, made up of over 800,000 kilometres of high-pressure pipes. Germany continued to mine nearly 200 million tons of lignite a year, while Sweden built a huge new highway around Stockholm. SUVs have become the second leading cause of rising global CO2 emissions. In April 1995, the month in which COP1 came to a close, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 363 parts per million. In April 2018, it exceeded 410 parts per million. Added to this are the devastating fires that have ravished parts of Australia, Siberia, the Amazon, and California from 2019 to this day, as well as the progressive rising sea levels, and increasingly extreme atmospheric phenomena such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts.
However, none of this has caused any sleepless nights for those who have the power to do something about the problem of climate change. Andreas Malm bitterly points out that the accumulation of capital still trumps common sense and the common good.
