Image of the week: Not much Cop29
Flash floods, droughts, wildfires, melting glaciers, the hottest year on record and Donald Trump. It’s not looking great, is it? But don’t worry, all the smart people at Cop29 will save the day.
True, the UN climate conference is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, where president Ilham Aliyev set out his stall early in proceedings, telling attendees that oil and gas are a “gift of God” and that countries like his one “should not be blamed” by hypocritical western powers for having fossil fuel reserves. What’s it supposed to do? Not use them?
Soon after, UN secretary-general António Guterres told the conference that intensifying the use of fossil fuels, as Azerbaijan plans to do, was “absurd”. Guterres is not given to sugar-coating the situation: “The world must pay up, or humanity will pay the price,” he said.
But as for the ongoing business of negotiating a deal in which wealthier nations finance a green-energy transition in poorer ones for the benefit of us all, the smart people in the room are not, unfortunately, the most powerful ones. Humanity is already paying the price. Keep 1.5 degrees within reach? According to the Climate Action Tracker project, the planet’s temperature is still very much on track to rise 2.7 degrees by 2100.
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In numbers: Wicked game
5
Missing letters on the URL printed on the packaging for a range of Mattel dolls that the toymaker released as a tie-in with the upcoming Wicked film. It should have said wickedmovie.com. Instead it left out the “movie” bit and directed children to a porn website.
$40
Typical retail price for the dolls in the US, where the misprint was “primarily” found, according to Mattel, which apologised for the mistake and advised parents that the incorrect website was “not appropriate for children”.
$2,000
Listed prices on eBay for Glinda and Elphaba dolls containing the error on the packaging were as high as $2,000, plus shipping, this week, after retailers withdrew their stocks and resellers deemed them “collectibles”.
Getting to know: Ministers for Loneliness
One policy in the Green Party’s manifesto that larger parties could very easily agree to in any coalition negotiation is its call for a Minister for Loneliness. The Greens want to appoint a super-junior minister with responsibility for reducing this “hidden epidemic” and improving social connectivity.
This doesn’t, alas, mean the party would be round at theirs, but it does involve worthwhile measures such as ringfenced funding for community groups, recognising loneliness as a reason for home help and expanding public transport, especially in rural areas.
An Irish minister for loneliness would not be the first. In the UK, the Conservatives had four such ministers from 2018 until the party left power this year, while in Japan, the title was first introduced in 2021 and is currently held by the same person with responsibility for measures to address Japan’s declining birth rate.
The list: Trump’s picks
From his “winter White House” in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Donald Trump has been busy assembling his team of Great American Patriots to run the US after January 20th. He’s got the man once investigated for sex trafficking lined up for attorney general. He’s got the woman who Russian state television describes as “our friend” overseeing national intelligence. And he’s got the Anti-Vaxxer-in-Chief in charge of health. Who else is in?
1. Pete Hegseth: You may think it impossible to accuse the Pentagon of being “woke”, but army veteran Hegseth believes it is – he once wrote an entire book on the subject. The “anti-woke” Fox News host will soon be secretary of defence.
2. Susie Wiles: The canny co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign will become the first female White House chief of staff. History might have unfolded very differently had Wiles, a veteran of Florida politics, not fallen out with her former boss, Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
3. Lee Zeldin: The former New York congressman will lead the US Environmental Protection Agency, with Trump intending it will make “swift deregulatory decisions”. Zeldin says he’s looking forward to cutting red tape.
4. Vivek Ramaswamy: Biotech entrepreneur and erstwhile presidential candidate Ramaswamy, dubbed an “American patriot” by Trump, will head up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the president-elect’s bid to slash the federal workforce and, most likely, award lucrative contracts to wealthy allies.
5. Elon Musk: DOGE is so efficient it needs two bosses. The other is the “Great Elon Musk”, a man with recent experience of gutting an organisation of all the people who used to make it function properly. DOGE is “potentially the Manhattan Project of our time”, Trump also says, which isn’t worrying at all.
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