The carbon footprint of COP 26 (the 2021 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland) was calculated as 103,000 tonnes (1). Comparatively, in 2020 China’s carbon footprint was 14,400,000,000 tonnes (27,000 tonnes a minute) and India’s carbon footprint was 2,412,000,000 tonnes (4,500 tonnes a minute). (2) Thus, in about 4 minutes, China produces as much CO2 as the entirety of the COP 26 event with India close behind at about 24 minutes. At COP 21 in Paris (2015), India’s President Modi would not sign the final agreement until his country was given technical proprietary rights from Solar City technology. This happened via negotiations between Al Gore, President Modi and Elon Musk (3). Let’s be clear. It is not the COP sessions that change the world. It’s the actual work that goes on after governments have made those promises. India’s solar output has increased 6-fold since then! The rest of the world has only doubled in the same time frame. (4) GHGs will not drop on their own. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is important and their carbon footprints are a drop in the bucket compared to the overall global emissions they help to reduce.
