BLOOMBERG • December 2, 2023
How many people do you think it takes to hammer out a global climate agreement? 500? 5,000? 50,000 Apparently, the correct answer is 70,000. That’s about how many people are expected to turn up in Dubai over the next few weeks for COP28, the latest United Nations climate confab, which started on Thursday. This is up from 49,704 at COP27 last year in Egypt, and 38,457 at COP26 in Scotland. Attendance has more than tripled since 2019. In COP’s early years, attendance averaged just 5,000. Whether this explosion is a sign that the world is taking climate change more seriously or just the bloat that naturally accumulates around gatherings of humans who control large pools of political and financial capital remains to be seen. ~ Mark Gongloff