It seems like only a year ago that COP28 was being held in the UAE – and I’m pretty sure I used this same joke then about COP27. Luckily, unlike me and my material, the world’s leaders and thinkers are adaptable and keen to change their ways. If fact, wasn’t everything sorted out in 2023?

In a change from last year’s oil-rich setting, this year’s host is the renewable energy paradise of Azerbaijan. The country’s big boss, Ilham Aliyev, opened the event by declaring that oil and gas are “a gift of the God” and that “countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them.”

Yes. The people. Clearly extremely fond of hydrocarbons (because of their divine origins) Aliyev, who looks a little like a 1980s snooker referee, joins a jolly of list of folk who adore oil for simply being oil.

Over on racial purification nexus X, site chief Elon Musk shared a post in praise of solar power, to which lots of his fevered followers slammed him for going too far. “You’re better than this” stormed one future disposer of undesirables.

Petrol is a religion. Or maybe a litmus test for unsound principles?

For see here: Argentina’s perfectly sane president, Javier Milei, has yanked his climate strategists away from COP29, for undeclared reasons.

Are there any clues? Well, Milei has simpered that the so-called climate crisis is a “socialist lie”. He also has a deep affection for the new US president, Donald Trump Part 2 – a man who shares similar views on so-called ‘global warming’. And it’s reciprocated. Trump recently told Milei, “You’re my favourite president”. Aah. If they can get Russell Brand in for jester activities, they could have the best Christmas ever.

And what of us, the UK? Kier Starmer told the cops, sorry, COP, that he had a new climate target up his freebie sleeve. The latest aspiration is to reduce our emissions by 81% of 1990 levels by 2035. 81%? Strangely, perhaps ominously, specific.

Before he left for Azerbaijan, Starmer said it was time for private companies to start paying to fix climate change – to which a global-wide roar of laughter was heard, the very mountains themselves shaking in the wake of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the energy industry’s collective guffaws. (The world’s 93 biggest oil and gas outfits made profits of $1.2tn in 2022.) Isn’t it good, all this money?

Meanwhile, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, told COP that “climate change kills”, after his country was devastated by extreme flooding two weeks ago that left 220 people dead.

He continued: “There are still people missing and hundreds of homes covered in mud. Some still doubt the scientific evidence of climate change. Let’s not drag our feet. We know what the problem is and what needs to be done. We have seen governments dither and walk backwards just to make the rich richer. This formula is leading us to disaster.”

One has to say, good luck with that, Senor Sanchez. Petrol worshippers have already put it about that the Spanish floods didn’t actually occur, that the horrific video footage was faked, that the dead and missing never existed etc. These people will not accept climate change or its increasingly dire effects under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. It’s a bizarre phenomenon, but the world is currently full of those, so perhaps it’s some kind of cosmic phase we’re going through; an astral stupidity belt the solar system is currently navigating?

What will save us? How about COP30, due for commencement in Brazil in about a year’s time? We can only hope.

COP31 is to be held at BP’s head offices with Steve Bannon compering and Jacob Rees-Mogg offering soothing backrubs, probably. Can I have some ice and a straw in my petrol, please?