MARK RILEY: COP has always been an expensive exercise in futility

Sitting in one of the smaller auditoriums at Copenhagen’s snow-blown Bella Centre on day three of the infamous COP15 in 2009, I experienced what a psychologist might call a moment of clarity.

And not in a good way.

After a string of sleepless nights at that godforsaken gabfest, my chin was bouncing off my chest as I struggled to maintain consciousness.

The hypnotic voice of the English translator in my headphones made it even more difficult to remain compos mentis as I sat with a small group of Australian journalists, waiting for prime minister Kevin Rudd to address the room.

Rudd was expected to hold forth on his defining belief that climate change was “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”.

We’d arrived early to secure our spots, condemning ourselves to enduring the contributions of several other leaders beforehand.

Then it happened.

As I drifted in and out of a state of sleep-deprived delirium it struck me that, after a succession of soporific contributions, the translation of the current booming voice I could hear beyond the headphones was suddenly starting to make sense.

“This guy seems to know what he’s talking about,” I announced to no one in particular.

I then prised open my eyelids to see that “this guy” was in fact the execrable Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez.

That was my moment of clarity.

If Hugo Chavez was making sense, then I was in real strife.

After three days of confusing, complex and contradictory contributions on the floor of that interminable talkfest, none of us had any idea what was really going on or what, if anything, COP15 was likely to achieve.

For journalists, that is a dangerous and unsustainable place to be.

We’d endured eight hours, knee-deep in a blizzard outside the centre, locked out because the computerised credentialing system was on the fritz.

And things went downhill from there.

By day two, we were only half-jokingly conspiring to hijack a snowplough and make a run for it.

I’ll never forget one of the great gentlemen of Australian journalism, former ABC political correspondent Jim Middleton, lunging towards then-climate minister Penny Wong to save her from toppling over at an impromptu 3am press conference Rudd had called on the final day.

“I haven’t slept at all,” Wong murmured apologetically as Middleton steadied her. Neither had the rest of us.

But the Chavez charade had proved a metaphorical and literal wake-up call.

I collared Rudd’s then press secretary, Lachie Harris, and pleaded with him for a background briefing with Rudd, which he quickly organised.

That briefing became infamous for other reasons. It’s the one where Rudd unloaded on “the f…king Chinese ratf...kers”.

One of the half a dozen journalists present breached their ethical undertaking by leaking the off-the-record remark to journalist David Marr, who then used it as the opening sequence of a piece on Rudd in the Quarterly Essay.

But that briefing had been invaluable, finally opening our eyes to the backroom shenanigans between the Chinese, Americans and others to ensure no binding commitment appeared in the final communique.

Rudd had seen COP15 as a pivotal opportunity for the world to finally sign up to the meaningful, united action he had long advocated for.

Instead — like most COPs — it turned out to be a hideously expensive exercise in orchestrated futility.

Rudd found himself frozen out of the frontline discussions by the main players, who had become wary of his unwillingness to accept another hollow, non-binding agreement.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown later claimed in a book that at one point Rudd became so enraged about the fix being put in that he had to be “physically restrained from punching the Chinese negotiator”. Rudd rejected that as “an urban myth”.

The climate calamity at Copenhagen sounded the death knell on Rudd’s prime ministership.

Within months, he would dump his signature Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme after it had been rejected by the Greens in the Senate.

Shortly after that, the Labor Party dumped him.

These and other repressed memories from that frozen farrago seeped back into consciousness this week as Anthony Albanese took the stage at COP31 in Turkey.

Again, many noble statements will be delivered. But, yet again, it will become just another massively expensive snow job as leaders conspire to say so much yet do so little.

And the citizens of the world will be left to cop that — and a big fat bill.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor