I began this post on the eve of my first COP in the equal spirits of awe and skepticism. Every COP is an enchanting contradiction, I am told. Here, the UNFCCC plots a trajectory for course correction from the shadow of a combustion engine in the shape of a city. On arrival, a cab ferried me along an arterial highway fourteen lanes deep, threading through desert overlain with golf courses. I am not exempt from contradictions either, traveling by air alongside some eighty-four thousand others; by week’s end, the two planes that carried me from Boston and Dubai had emitted 4.7 tons of CO2.
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