Golly, look what RTÉ has just broadcast and published:

Leading doctors report HSE to HIQA over transgender care

The two most experienced clinicians involved in transgender healthcare in Ireland have made a formal complaint to the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) about the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) treatment of children with gender identity issues, Prime Time has learned.

Professor Donal O’Shea and psychiatrist Dr Paul Moran of the National Gender Service (NGS) allege that the HSE has been directing children to services overseas that adhere to a so-called ‘gender-affirming’ Model of Care.

Prof O’Shea and Dr Moran say that the gender-affirming model can damage children and is associated with a greater readiness to start on inappropriate medical treatment for patients presenting with gender identity issues.

How very interesting.

What we’re supposed to think, you know, is that being trans is a wonderful thing, and that no one should be discouraged or slowed down from embracing it. We’re supposed to think it’s only social disapprobation that makes being trans less than fun, and if only everyone everywhere embraced it like a long lost puppy, all would be peaches and cream.

Ireland, along with other countries, has seen a surge in cases of gender-questioning adults and especially children in recent years.

A Children’s Ombudsman survey last year of children aged 12-17 suggests that one in 25 identifies either as non-binary or as being a gender different to their biological sex.

Good god. That’s a lot.

How these children should be treated is at the core of the dispute which is often heated.

The gender-affirming Model of Care, favoured by transgender activists and some clinicians internationally means accepting a patient’s own view of their gender identity.

This approach is supported by World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organisation made up of both activists and clinicians specialising in trans healthcare. The WPATH model is supported by the Irish Government.

I wonder how separate the clinicians who specialize in trans healthcare are from the activists and their activism – in other words I wonder how activist those clinicians are. My guess is more than zero%.

Dr Moran and Prof O’Shea argue that an exploratory Model of Care based on “probing assessment” should be used. They argue that this approach has a stronger role for psychiatry and is more comprehensive and safer.

Niamh Ní Féineadh from Trans Healthcare Action says that instead of causing harm, the gender-affirming model relieves distress for those needing healthcare.

Circular, mate. How do we know those needing healthcare do need healthcare? How do we know they “need healthcare” in the form of gender affirmation? We don’t. That’s the point.

Ms Ní Féineadh supports a gender-affirming model of care over an exploratory model.

“The patient-centred gender-affirming model means that doctors, patients and their parents should work together as a team. They should have a trust relationship. They should understand the patient’s needs at any one given moment,” she said.

The doctors should then present the treatment options and information to the patient, she said.

“The patient should be supported in whatever decision that they make. It’s kind of like supporting a child who wants to learn a language or an instrument,” she said.

Yeah no it’s not. It’s not like that at all. It’s not remotely like that. Learning a language or an instrument pretty much never does anyone any harm. It certainly never alters their bodies in drastic ways that can never be fully undone. It may bore them or tire them but that’s pretty much the worst that can happen. Trying to change sex via surgery and/or hormones? Not so much.

For adults to be referred for gender confirmation surgery in Ireland through the NGS, up to three further interviews can take place, she said.

“Those are very in-depth, and they talk in very specific and graphic detail about your sex life, what sex acts you enjoy, and how the surgery is going to impact those…That depth of conversation is unnecessary.”

“What other medical procedure do you have multiple in-depth interviews before you proceed with it? Do you have an in-depth interview with a clinical psychologist before you get an appendectomy?” she asked, describing as a “pathologising of transgender healthcare.”

But trying to change someone’s sex isn’t a “medical procedure.” It’s quackery intended as a kind of psychic or mental procedure, but it entails ruining the body. Trying to change someone’s sex is in no way like an appendectomy unless the patient has no need of an appendectomy – in which case it’s stark malpractice. Refusing to ruin a patient’s body, not so much.

Prime Time understands that the complaint made by Dr Moran and Prof O’Shea highlights concern over a clinic in Belgium and England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, where clinicians generally follow a gender-affirming Model of Care.

Ah good – the Tavistock is internationally famous for its destructive haste in these matters. What an accolade.

The Tavistock was shut down for new referrals last year, leaving children in need of specialist gender assessments in the lurch. Children already being treated by the Tavistock continue to receive treatment there.

The closure of the Tavistock to new patients came after reviews by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass revealed unsatisfactory levels of care and a service overstretched by a 26-fold increase in referrals from 136 in the year to March 2011 to 3,585 in the year to March 2022.

The Cass review found that some Tavistock staff felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

In other words just the approach Ms Ní Féineadh assures us is the only right one. Quick, slice out those genitals before she/he changes her/his mind.

An article from the CDC: 2,500-year Evolution of the Term Epidemic:

The term epidemic (from the Greek epi [on] plus demos [people]), first used by Homer, took its medical meaning when Hippocrates used it as the title of one of his famous treatises. At that time, epidemic was the name given to a collection of clinical syndromes, such as coughs or diarrheas, occurring and propagating in a given period at a given location. Over centuries, the form and meaning of the term have changed. Successive epidemics of plague in the Middle Ages contributed to the definition of an epidemic as the propagation of a single, well-defined disease. The meaning of the term continued to evolve in the 19th-century era of microbiology. Its most recent semantic evolution dates from the last quarter of the 20th century, and this evolution is likely to continue in the future.

At the start of the 21st century, epidemics of infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, avian influenza, and HIV/AIDS have, in recent years, supported the reality of this threat. Civil wars and natural catastrophes are sometimes followed by epidemics. Climate change, tourism, the concentration of populations in refugee camps, the emergence of new human pathogens, and ecologic changes, which often accompany economic development, contribute to the emergence of infectious diseases and epidemics (1). Epidemics, however, have occurred throughout human history and have influenced that history. The term epidemic is ≈2,500 years old, but where does it come from?

H/t Gordon Campbell

When museums and galleries tell us lies.

That’s so ridiculous. There were no “LGBTQIA+” groups in 1988. That wasn’t a thing.

Trans ideology along with all its other flaws is gruesomely imperialist. Get outta the way you boring lesbians and gays, trans people and “queer” people are way more interesting and exciting than you.

If you want to learn more from pink suit guy here he is:

Jo Bartosch at Unherd:

Badenoch has never compared “children coming out as trans” to a disease. She has, however, referred to the surge in referrals to NHS gender identity services as “almost an epidemic”. And while it might be an emotive word, there has been a 1,607% increase across the past decade in referrals to NHS Gender Identity Services (Gids) at the NHS Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust. Although the Tavistock clinic has now been shut following a report which slammed the service as “not safe” for children, there are still 8,000 youngsters on the NHS waiting list for help with gender confusion. This unprecedented rise in need for Gids can rightly be understood as an “epidemic”.

In the figurative sense rather than the literal one, but the figurative sense has been around for a hella long time.

More widely, “epidemic” is one of those words that gets lazily tossed around by politicians. Osborne has herself referred to a drink “spiking epidemic”, a “child poverty epidemic” and an “epidemic of violence against women and girls”. Yet outside of the murky depths of social media, no one would seriously accuse Osborne of suggesting that the victims of drink spiking, children living in poverty or female survivors of male violence are diseased.

Because in general we know perfectly well that words can have both literal and metaphorical meanings. It’s also true that we know metaphorical meanings can be dog whistles. It’s complicated.

Here we go.

This is the thing, you see – like a lot of words, “epidemic” has a narrow literal meaning and an expanded, somewhat metaphorical one. I think “epidemic” probably originally referred to disease only, but it’s been used to mean “[undesirable] trend” and the like for a hella long time. Kate Osborne isn’t wrong to say that it’s not a hooray word – it’s used of trends the speaker dislikes or disapproves of, not of trends she welcomes and embraces. We don’t talk of an epidemic of politeness or safe driving. We do however often talk about epidemics of [thing I don’t like] without meaning “disease.”

So, Osborne would have been on safer ground, I think, if she’d said that using the word epidemic is a dog whistle. She would have been wrong, I also think, but not as close to slanderous as she was.

Why do I think she would have been wrong? Because Badenoch wasn’t saying there’s an epidemic of these horrid people, she was saying there’s an epidemic of bad things being done to people. Transing teenagers is bad, and an ideology that urges the transing of teenagers is bad.

The war between the literal and the metaphorical continues.

What is “the gender police v Kemi Badenoch” that the BBC is not reporting on? I was thinking I’d already posted about it but I hadn’t. I can’t give you the tidy BBC version because they haven’t reported on it at all so here is the TalkTV version instead:

Minister Kemi Badenoch accused Labour MP Kate Osborne of ‘lying’ in a fiery clash over language used to describe transgender children

Kemi Badenoch accused Labour MP Kate Osbourne of lying during a fiery clash that erupted over language used to describe transgender children in an appearance at the Women and Equalities Select Committee on 13 December.

The Cabinet minister hit back at [rebuked] Ms Osborne for accusing her of previously using “inflammatory language that likens children and young people coming out as trans to the spread of a disease”.

Ms Badenoch, who is also the Business and Trade Secretary, said: “I have never said that, that is a lie. That is a lie and I think you should withdraw that statement. That is a lie. You are lying.”

MP for Jarrow Ms Osborne affirmed she was not lying, but Ms Badenoch responded: “You are lying. I have never used the word ‘disease’ and this is exactly what I am talking about — you are making statements at a select committee that are untrue.”

Conservative committee chairwoman Caroline Nokes interrupted to say: “Can I just remind the minister that that is unparliamentary language to use?”

Ms Badenoch replied: “What she said is not true. We have to use facts in this room, we can’t just make stuff up.”

It’s what trans ideology does though. This isn’t Parliament, so I can say that. Trans ideology just makes stuff up all the time – it’s based on just making stuff up.

Interesting. If I’m reading this correctly the BBC is not reporting on the gender police v Kemi Badenoch.

Josh Parry is the BBC’s “LGBT & Identity” producer. (Who knew they had one? Who knew there is such a thing?)

From last year, but still worth a look.

My favorite part is the subtitled “laughter”.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

I’ve just started reading philosopher Val Plumwood’s Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason, a 2002 follow-up to her 1993 work Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. I’m barely past the introduction and I’m already amazed. It feels like every other sentence or two is a “Holy shit!” moment, where she either puts things into a perspective I’ve never thought of before, or encapsulates ideas that have been rattling around in my own head for quite some time. If Feminism and the Mastery of Nature was an examination of the origins of our current crisis in the foundations of Western thought, this book looks to be an even more detailed look at the path we’ve travelled since, and a proposal as to how to get through and out of the multiple crises we’ve triggered. The latter is a tall order indeed: she’s proposing the re-examination and uprooting of several millennia of ingrained thought and its distortion of our understanding of our relationship with the rest of the living world and the material and energetic cycles that sustain it. Here’s how she outlines the problem in the introduction to Environmental Culture:

The deterioration of the global ecological context of human life demands from our species a clear and adequate response, but we are seemingly immobilised, even though it is clear that at the technological level we already have the means to accomplish the changes needed to live sustainably on and with the earth. The problem is not primarily about more knowledge or technology: it is about developing an environmental culture that values and fully acknowledges the non-human sphere and our dependency on it, and is able to make good decisions about how we live and impact on the non-human world. For the dominant global cultures of the west, the response to the crisis must be either about democratic cultural change of this kind or it must be about top-down solutions imposed on a supposedly recalcitrant citizenry….

You can read the Introduction and some of the first chapter here.

Having enjoyed Feminism and the Mastery of Nature I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this book.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Part of a network.

It is important to say these things at the outset of this report because society regularly tells LGBTQ+ people that they are not normal

And right here is the fundamental divide, the problem with coupling homosexuality and gender nonconformity with transgender. The society that regularly tells people who don’t abide by the conventions associated with their sex that they’re perverted, wicked, or sick is not the same part of society which views sex as a biological category we can’t choose to follow or not. The reasoning is completely different. The issue is completely different.

We do not believe that psychics are not normal. We question the existence of psychic powers.

We do not believe that reincarnated people are not normal. We question the existence of reincarnation.

We don’t come up with elaborate excuses for why prophets aren’t really prophesying because we don’t like how they’re different than the rest of us, and so we are disgusted or fearful.

I’ve talked to many people who believe in the paranormal and abilities associated with the paranormal. When I ask them what they think motivates skepticism, they seldom bring up anything having to do with evidence or science. They almost all talk about how skeptics are afraid of what is different. They frame skeptics not accepting ESP the way the SPLC frames critics of gender ideology: through ethics rather than reason. A form of Argumentum ad Hominem.

Of course they did.

What’s trans ideology got to do with Southern poverty and law?

Not one damn thing.

The SPLC turns its attention from Southern poverty law to talk instead about luxury idennnies and the evil demons who don’t bend the knee to them.

Opening line:

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) people exist in all societies across the world and thrive in all areas of life. 

What are “Queer” people? How do they differ from lesbian and gay people? Why are they part of this discussion?

And why are transgender people part of this discussion? They’re the opposite of lesbian and gay, rather than being a branch of lesbian and gay.

And what does the “+” mean?

It is important to say these things at the outset of this report because society regularly tells LGBTQ+ people that they are not normal.[vi] The assumptions that LGBTQ+ people are abnormal are called heterosexism and cisnormativity, and they are pervasive in our culture.

Called by whom? I don’t call anything “cisnormativity.”

These assumptions also show up in faulty scientific studies that sustain medical and policy industries dedicated to changing who LGBTQ+ people are and limiting LGBTQ+ rights by promoting conversion therapy, de-transitioning, bans on gender-affirming health care, bans on transgender people playing sports, censorship of LGBTQ+ topics in public schools, bans on public expression of LGBTQ+ culture like drag performances, and other politically motivated attempts to erase LGBTQ+ identities. 

Note that sly but stupid “bans on transgender people playing sports.” This is how far the SPLC has fallen. It’s pathetic.

This report examines recent developments in the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience industry. In Chapter 1, we offer an overview of pseudoscience as an enforcement mechanism of white, heterosexual, cisgender supremacy.

Note the obligatory meaningless “white.”

This is embarrassing.

It looks as if the whole thing is about 8 billion pages, and I don’t think I have the will to read much more of it.

I’m so tired of stupid.

The way they talk about this!

What did she say?

Many of the countries that are providing surrogacy at the moment internationally are closed to same sex couples, it’s against the law in those countries that same sex couples would avail of it.

Wait slow down. “Countries are providing surrogacy”??? Wtf does that mean? Countries can’t gestate babies for people. It’s only women who can do that – individual women who “provide surrogacy” by gestating one baby at a time. That’s what she meant but it’s not what she said, and what we say about this matters. “Providing surrogacy” makes it sound so tidy, so official, so acceptable. It’s none of those.

The whole conversation rests on the assumption that women’s bodies are a commodity.

But will it make a difference? Probably not.

The agreement reached in this glitzy metropolis for the first time nails the role of fossil fuel emissions in driving up temperatures and outlines a future decline for coal, oil and gas. In UN terms that is historic, and the biggest step forward on climate since the Paris agreement in 2015.

But by itself, will this deal be enough to save the “north star” of this COP – keeping temperatures under 1.5C this century? Most likely not.

And that’s not just because of the petrostates.

A key factor in softening the text was the attitude of middle-income developing countries who were very uncertain about the much hyped phased out of fossil fuels. For Nigeria, Uganda, Colombia and others there were complaints that they needed to use revenues from the sale of coal, oil and gas to ensure they could pay for the transition to greener energy.

Colombia complained that by moving away from fossil fuels, credit agencies had downgraded their rating, meaning that international loans to go green would cost them far more.

Humans just aren’t wired to be able to put the future ahead of the present. If you have starving children you’re going to feed them the seeds for next year’s crop.

What the COP agreement says:

The decision text from Cop28 has been greeted as “historic”, for being the first ever call by nations for a “transition away” from fossil fuels, and as “weak and ineffectual” and containing a “litany of loopholes” for the fossil fuel industry. 

First ever call to do something they have no intention of doing.

The text states the huge challenge with crystal clarity:

Limiting global warming to 1.5C [above pre-industrial levels] with no or limited overshoot requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to the 2019 level and reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. [Countries] further recognise the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C pathways.

The problem is that carbon emissions are not plunging as required – they are still rising. So the text on action is vital.

Well, the text on action is vital if it can change anything, but can it? Nobody is doing anything resembling deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If they were there wouldn’t be all these billions of cars on the streets and planes in the skies and ships on the seas.

Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power.

This is no stronger than the text from Cop26 in 2021, which is disappointing as the dirtiest fossil fuel must unquestionably be phased out rapidly. 

There’s a pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks near where I live. I cross it often to get to the park where the grain terminal is, on the edge of Elliott Bay. If a train is going by I like to watch it doing so from above…except sometimes what it’s hauling is 50 or 60 or however many it is cars full to the brim of…coal. It’s like a horror movie.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.

Extraordinary as it might seem, this is the first time the root cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels – have been cited in a decision text in nearly 30 years of UN climate talks. But “transitioning away” is weaker than “phasing out”. The latter was supported by 130 countries but fiercely opposed by petrostates. In the real world, fossil fuels are actually being phased up, with many new fields being exploited. Is “transitioning away” a strong enough signal to halt these investments? Probably not, but at least the direction of travel is finally clear.

“Probably not” is quite the understatement.

Progress.

One of the UK’s largest private hospital groups has guaranteed its patients same sex care, prompting calls for the NHS to follow suit. HCA has rewritten its policies to promise that patients will be provided with intimate care by a staff member of the same “sex” rather than the same “gender”. This means that a trans woman could not provide personal care to a female patient unless that patient has given express consent or in emergency situations.

It comes after the hospital was forced to apologise to patient Teresa Steele for cancelling her operation when she requested that only biological women were [would be] involved in her intimate care.

Remember that? October last year? They cancelled the day before the operation and thus caused her horrific problems including months of pain.

HCA is believed to be one of the first major healthcare providers in the UK to offer this guarantee, and the move has led to pressure on the NHS to do the same.

Many NHS trusts offer care based on gender, as opposed to sex, and particular concern has been raised about a policy that allows biological men to be placed on female-only wards on the basis of their self-defined gender identity.

Way to make women terrified to get medical treatment.

Ms Steele is now working with a newly founded group called Caring About Dignity to support women who “like me have been victimised for asking for same sex care”. She said that the NHS particularly “operate self-ID policies which resemble those of the Scottish prison system”

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said that the policy change was “extremely welcome”.

“The news of guaranteed same-sex care will bring much relief to HCA patients and those NHS patients fortunate enough to be referred there,” she said.

But not NHS patients not fortunate enough to be referred there. Get a move on, NHS.

Originally a comment by Rob on Just sprinkle in a few sustainability coordinators.

A long time ago Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about this. He called it Götterdämmerung* Capitalism. He made the point that free market Capitalism will never surrender a resource or technique for exploiting the resource no matter how inefficient or dire the consequences until it is economically imperative that it does so. Really, you say, but we live in a capitalist society and companies adopt practices to look after the environment and reduce emissions. That’s true, but it’s only because regulations have actually forced that on them over decades of incremental change – pushed by activists and researchers working to change both societal and governmental attitudes.

For large and complex problems, especially with long lead times, the free market is woeful. Action has to be taken by governments to regulate responses from both companies and individuals. In democracies we tend to vote that kind of ‘nanny state’ or ‘socialism/marxism’ down. Non-democracies tend not to do it unless forced to because they rely on a complacent population to keep their heads. Fifty years ago we might have got ahead of the curve enough to blunt the effects. Now we’re going to spend the next 10-20 years arguing while doing almost nothing, and the next 40 years fighting vicious wars over dwindling supplies of food and water in habitable parts of the globe. it’s a huge shame. A crime really. Because even now if we acted globally we could at least avoid most of the wars.

* “Twilight of the gods.” Figuratively, the term is extended to situations of world-altering destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Magical solutions.

It’s interesting his notation about sustainability and corporations. I realized quite a long time ago that most sustainability coordinators/directors/whatever, are very much on track with corporate free market agendas, and the only solutions I’ve ever heard have been very business friendly, and very climate hostile, while singing the praises of green this and green that.

I suspect the rise of the sustainability coordinator is less a signal of corporate commitment to fighting climate change and more a commitment to doing nothing. Any time Congress started rattling the swords of possible regulations, the businesses could point to their sustainability department and crow about their free market commitment to sustainability, helping to stave off any new regulations so they could keep doing business as usual but with a nice coat of greenwashing.

Congress would have no trouble accepting that, because most of the representatives and senators are more than happy to deregulate or not impose new regulations. Voters can be swayed by an opponent pointing to new regulations, saying “this cost taxpayers [fill in astronomically large price] for what? Something that won’t feed you or put clothes on your back or gas in your car.” Then voters go to the polls, misinformed…or maybe half informed, but most regulations do not cost what the anti-regulation propaganda says it will, and often does more than they say it will. The problem is, most of what it does is unseen by the average voter, so it looks like wasting money to them

So they put in sustainability coordinators, sign agreements with bodies made up of corporations to show their commitment, and change nothing. And Congress (Parliament, etc…fill in legislating body of your preference) is happy to believe them.

Auden Schendler is the senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen One and the author of the forthcoming book Terrible Beauty: Reckoning With Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul. He wrote about the futile “magical solutions floating out of Dubai” in the Times:

I have spent my career working on climate change — not theoretically but in the trenches, crawling under trailers to insulate them under a federal government program to help low-income families conserve energy, building solar farms, capturing methane from coal mines, bolstering the climate movement through various nonprofit boards and crafting policy at the state and municipal levels. I served as a state regulator and an elected town councilman.

I have also spent 25 years in the field of corporate sustainability, trying to figure out how business might become a meaningful part of the climate solution. Over time, I came to understand that the ethic being applied — the idea that free markets can solve societal problems and that even a monstrosity like climate change can be fixed without regulation — was a ruse that I had bought into, realizing that fraud only late in the game.

Free markets probably can solve some societal problems, but all of them? Hardly. This one? Oh hell no.

As the global climate summit in Dubai has unspooled, I’ve read inexplicably cheerful social media posts from colleagues and friends, climate leaders I admire and total unknowns at COP28, the Conference of the Parties — which I’ve come to call the party at the end of the world. These “Look, Ma!” posts strike me as forced, naïve at best, trending toward willful blindness and delusion.

One “breakthrough” being lauded includes a purely voluntary commitment by fossil fuel companies to better capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas we absolutely must contain.

Well you see if it’s not purely voluntary it’s not the free market, and then where would we be?

For fossil fuel companies, committing to containing methane leaking from their pipelines and wellheads is a way for those businesses to appear beneficent while continuing to traffic in oil and gas. It is that very trafficking that causes the leakage that must be regulated, even as scientists tell us the essential action required to control warming is to stop burning coal, oil and gas.

Aw come on. They say they’ll fix the leaks. Surely that ought to be enough for you people??

At the same time, there were glimmers of hope. As the climate conference began, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced comprehensive new rules to regulate methane in the United States, at least. There are also plans to create a fund to help vulnerable nations hit by climate disasters, and to set a goal of tripling the amount of renewable power worldwide by 2030 (if high interest rates don’t derail that objective). There were also calls for a full fossil fuel phaseout.

But that proposed phaseout rattled the conference hosts in Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s leading oil producers. It is ramping up oil production. The idea was quickly scuttled. The head of the OPEC cartel called on its members to reject any plan that would threaten the production and sale of oil, gas and coal. And it was no idle threat: All 198 participating nations must consent to any agreement.

You don’t see the cruise industry phasing itself out either.

It’s not going to happen.

Oh we can’t do that.

A statement delivered by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on behalf of what’s known as the umbrella group of countries, came as tensions flared at the United Arab Emirates over the text of a draft deal proposed by the summit presidency.

Released early on Monday evening local time, the draft avoided highly contentious calls for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels in an attempt to find consensus from nearly 200 countries that have been meeting in Dubai for nearly a fortnight.

Sssshhhh don’t mention fossil fuels. Touchy subject.

Some observers welcomed elements of the draft, including the first mention in a Cop text of reducing fossil fuel production, but others were scathing, describing it as “grossly insufficient” and “incoherent”.

Cedric Schuster of Samoa, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”

Bowen referred to Schuster’s statement in his intervention in a later meeting between government representatives and the UAE summit president, Sultan Al Jaber. He was speaking on behalf of the umbrella group of countries, which also includes New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

“My friend Cedric Schuster, the Samoan minister, said tonight of this draft that we will not sign our death certificates,” Bowen said. “That’s what’s at stake for many countries who are represented here tonight and many people who do not have a voice. We will not be a co-signatory to those death certificates.”

…

Instead of requiring producers to cut their fossil fuel output, the draft framed such reductions as optional by calling on countries to “take actions that could include” reducing fossil fuels. Some country groups, including the EU, indicated it could lead them to walk out of the talks if not addressed.

While many countries wanted the text strengthened, climate campaigners feared that others such as Saudi Arabia and its oil producing allies in Opec might use the final hours to try to further weaken the draft. The Saudis have spent the meeting insisting the document should refer to dealing with emissions, not fossil fuels.

Because without fossil fuels Saudi Arabia is a sandy spot on the globe.