Skip to content
Green
Zero

You Can’t Tackle Climate Change Without COP

How do you get 200 countries to agree on climate policy? Patricia Espinosa, former head of the UN body that organizes COP, explains the mechanics on Episode 13 of Zero

Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, speaks during the opening day of COP26.

Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, speaks during the opening day of COP26.

Photographer: Emily Macinnes/Bloomberg
By

Each year, United Nations-sponsored climate talks attract officials, journalists, activists and corporate executives in the thousands. However, many prominent climate activists pulled out of COP27 happening in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, calling it a “greenwashing” COP.

That’s not just because protests are effectively banned in Egypt, which activists rightly feared would muffle their voices, but also because progress at COP meetings has been too slow to meet the urgency of the climate challenge.