RUTHFULLY YOURS

Rating: AAA+
Prep Time: 21+ years
Cook Time: 2 weeks at an exotic location at least once a year
Serving Size: 7,300+ million
Chefs de cuisine: 35,000+
Venue 2015: Le Bourget, Paris

Preamble

Preparing soufflé is really just a matter of time; the time gap from the oven to the table.

Le climat-soufflé – aka the Conference of the Parties (COP) global climate-change action treaty – takes a little longer than a plain-vanilla creation. Oceans may be warming and tempers rising, but not le climat-soufflé. Still simmering after 21 years, it remains flat as a pancake or an Aussie flip-flop-flan Plan B.

Attitude is important when in the COP kitchen. To conjure up a grand miracle de cuisine keep your mind on the job, not the dollars in the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But no carnal thoughts. For as the French say: “A woman so happy in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman so unhappy in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.”  (Sabrina, 1954).

Or the COP bureaucrat, dazzled by confirmation bias, and the climate-scientist by his model and the raunchy company she keeps – mistakes the menu for the food, and his finger for the moon.

Another famous French saying: Le climat-soufflé n’attend pas, on attend le climat-soufflé. Meaning le climat-soufflé doesn’t wait, we — the guests, the COP 21 delegates and all the world — wait.

But today I will not wait for le climat-soufflé – or the 18+-year old global warming pause to end. I will make it for you right now.

Perfect Climat-Soufflé Recipe

Preparation:

1. READ the COP21 48-page bracket-ridden dog’s-breakfast (DB) compilation draft text here.

“Draft agreement and draft decision on workstreams 1 and 2 of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action – Work of the ADP Contact Group incorporating bridging proposals by the Co-facilitators” (4 December 2015, 10.00 version).

Note that “proposals which oppose the inclusion of certain provisions in the Agreement or the Decision do not figure in this text, on the understanding that the inclusion of a provision is without prejudice to the views of Parties that may not support the elaboration of any such provision at all.” Go figure.

2. READ the Parable of the Dishes too. A little treat can go a long way.

“Give them something to eat,” He said.

“But we have only five climat-souffles and 2,500 million Kyoto I carbon credits. How can we buy food for a crowd of 7,300 million?” they asked.

“Have them sit down in groups of 500 million and sing Saint Bob’s Earth Song with gusto.”

Taking the five climat-souffles and looking down to Gaia, He gave thanks and broke them. The multitudes ate and were satisfied. Twelve baskets of leftovers were fed to endangered species and the media.

Instructions:

1. EMPHASISE to all climat-chefs the importance of promoting, protecting and respecting the human rights of all in the COP kitchen, including:

the right to development, the right to health, and the rights of indigenous peoples, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable climate situations [, and under occupation,] as well as promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, while taking into account the needs of local communities, intergenerational equity concerns, and the integrity of ecosystems and of Mother Earth, when taking action to address climate change,

2. NOTE extent to which developing countries will implement the Climat-Soufflé Agreement is highly conditional – no dollars, no deal – and

will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments on the provision of finance, technology development and transfer and capacity-building.

3. PREPARE for first flotilla of ‘climate-refugees’, as

A climate change displacement coordination facility shall be established under the [Warsaw International Mechanism][CMA] to help coordinate efforts to address climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation. (Article 5, clause 3)

Ingredients

To the standard basket of COP climat-soufflé ingredients:

1. ADD a bucket of writhing common but differentiated responsibilities and pray with passion:

“Malaysia speaking on behalf of the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) and South Africa speaking for the larger G-77 and China group, both reiterated that the final deal would necessarily have to see equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities deeply embedded in all its parts – mitigation, finance, adaptation, compliance, review, clean technology sharing and capacity building.”

Nitin Sethi, New Delhi, Business Standard: “Are you indirectly saying that the US is trying to breach the firewall of differentiation and you don’t want that to happen?

Ajay Mathur, a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, director general of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency:

“The differentiation was done for a very specific purpose. It was to make differentiation between those who are [allegedly] responsible for historic emissions [developed world] and those who are not [developing world]. That calculus and those numbers haven’t really changed. We don’t see why that concept should be swept under the carpet.”

2. ADD a truckload of lack of trust behind closed doors and stir with vigour:

“Over the week the negotiations had been conducted through multiple parallel negotiations behind closed doors, called spin-off groups.  The developed countries had blocked progress towards compromises on issues closer to the interest of the developing countries, such as finance and clean technology. Simultaneously they had kept up the effort to block a clear operationalisation of the principle of differentiation. This meant the draft for the Paris agreement was still riddled with brackets (showing disagreement between countries) when on Friday it was stitched back together based on the negotiations in the spin-off groups — called the compilation text.”

3. ADD a supertanker of unrealistic expectations, while chanting your favourite anti-fossil fuel mantra.

Instructions

1. PREPARE RAMEKINS

• Brush ramekins with softened unsalted hype from bottom upwards. This will make your climat-soufflé rise evenly. Coat with GCF sugar. Shake out any ‘excess’ dollars. Set them aside for later use in some airy-fairy ‘climate-proofing’ project.

2. ECO-WHITE SAUCE

• Over medium heat, add butter in sauce pan and melt it. Add climate-hyperbole. Cook for one minute, stirring with a wooden spoon to create eco-white roux.
• Remove pan from alarmist-heat, gradually add hot activist-milk, and stir until raucous. This is eco-white sauce. Remove from the heat.
• Add in salt and vanilla extract and stir until combined. Separate eggs. Add in egg yolks one by one. Stir to combine.

3. MAKE FRENCH MERINGUE

• Whisk egg whites. Keep whisking until firm peaks form. Add GCF sugar gradually while slowly whisking. Keep whisking until soft peaks form. This is French climat-meringue.

4. COMBINE (2) AND (3)

• Add about one-third of French climat-meringue into the raucous eco-white sauce. Whisk until pompous. Pour all eco-white sauce into it and whisk until just combined. Be careful not to crush the delicate COP meringue. Do not use President Hollandaise sauce during this step.

5. BAKE

• Spoon the mixture into ramekins. Run thumb around inside of rim. This will help soufflé rise. Bake in Earth-oven preheated to 200° C – not 2° C –  for one to five decades, or until there is no sign of anthropogenic life.
• Ensure the stars are aligned before you turn up the heat . Have your climate-resilience initiatives handy in case there is an extreme temper event (ETE).
• If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

6. SERVE

• Common-but-differentiated ramekins are very hot, so place on a plate. Dust your climat-soufflé with GCF sugar and serve immediately out of COP oven to delegates and media – with a complimentary glass of Armagnac on behalf of the Republic.

7. BOOK

• For Climat-Soufflé Action 2016 summit of chefs de cuisine from government, business, cities, civil society and academia on May 5–6 next year in Washington, D.C.
• Complementing and catalysing concrete climat-soufflé deliverables in specific high-calorific areas, this haute-cuisine feast will appeal to gourmet-catastrophists everywhere.

8. MOVE

As COP Chef-de-Cuisine urges here, we must

• Rapidly expand and accelerate climat-soufflé action at every level – à toute vitesse – from the local to the global.
• Go further and faster in line with what climat-soufflé pseudo-science requires – if we are to control the planet’s elusive thermostat and limit earth-oven temperature rise to less than 2° C.
• Empower a new international class of climat-chefs who – with your faith, hope and charity – know how to bake and BS their way out of trouble.

9. HOPE

• Suffering from soufflé-fatigue syndrome in the kitchen? Feeling life is just a tent full of big enchiladas? Relax.
• COP chefs-de-cuisine occupy the high moral ground. They will survive rising oceans, soaring temperatures – and even a merde-tsunami or three – to bake another day.
• As Kobad Bhavnagri, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance Australia, noted last week:

“One of the key things to understand about climate negotiations is that it is a never-ending negotiation really. It is a moving feast. There will be never one conference where we say ‘aha’ we’ve cracked it and this is it, we can all go home, join hands and say now climate change has been solved.”  Amen.

• Even in a weird world of COP climate conferences without end there will always be a deep anthropogenic yearning for Hopenhagen – and the perfect climat-soufflé .

10. LOVE

• We’ll always have Paris too – and Shell’s ‘beautiful relationship’ .