Pádraig Hoare: Protestors can't get through the turnstiles but fossil fuel giants make their presence felt at Cop26 

A picture and quotation taken from Britain's Queen Elizabeth's address to Cop26 delegates as she appears as a domination on the Piccadilly Lights at Piccadilly Circus in London, on Wednesday. Picture: AP Kirsty Wigglesworth

Insulated initially from the protests and visceral anger pervading the chilly Glasgow air this week, Cop26 delegates got their first sense on Wednesday morning that all is not well among environmental warriors on the ground. 

Thousands of delegates – some 25,000 will attend the Glasgow event overall – queued impatiently on Monday and Tuesday for hours on end, herded together with social distancing nowhere in sight and a single line entrance to alleviate the bottleneck.

It was the most middle-class of annoyance, as civil servants, academics, business executives, and media figures moaned at the terrible logistics laid on at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC), oblivious to the real and growing anger throughout the city among foot soldiers of the environmental cause.

The long-time environmental activists protesting with banners and voices couldn't even get past the initial turnstiles into the outside grounds of the SEC on Wednesday.

Climate activists stage a mock ceremony on the Buchanan Street Steps, featuring 'the queen' turning off the oil tap, on the anniversary of the queen inaugurating the flow of North Sea oil on 3 November 3, 1975. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

True environmental warriors may have been persona non grata at the SEC, as style triumphed over substance while world leaders were in the building, but legacy energy companies had no such problems.

Far from being locked out of proceedings, advertising hoardings and stalls from fossil fuel giants were unmissable as attendees meandered their way through the sprawling campus. 

Born in 2005, Earth Uprising founder Alexandria Villaseñor has become a powerful voice in the climate crisis, along with Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and other young champions of action. 

Ms Villaseñor could barely hide her disgust from inside the SEC. 

"First, it's true, there's one entrance for 20,000 attendees, it's like a single file line for everyone to get in and get through security. I've spent four hours in line over the past two days. It's chaos and a failure on the part of the organisers... Inside, it gets even weirder, with civil society literally locked out of negotiation spaces, with no video link or any other way to effectively observe at all," she tweeted.

First, it's true, there's one entrance for 20k attendees, it's like a single file line for everyone to get in and get through security. I've spent 4 hours in line over the past 2 days. It's chaos and a failure on the part of the organizers/2https://t.co/pq0nck4dTL

— Alexandria Villaseñor (@AlexandriaV2005) November 3, 2021

She pointed to the farcical sponsorship of Australia's Cop26 stand by oil and gas producer Santos, among other anomalies that should have no place at a major summit aimed at fundamentally altering the current disastrous global warming of the planet. 

While people of colour and indigenous people of the world protested with righteous anger outside the security barriers at the disproportionate actions of fossil fuel emissions on their communities, members of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) were having a grand time, whisked through barriers to attend their meetings at Cop26.

Members of Extinction Rebellion take part in a Green Rebellion protest on Buchanan Street, during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

IETA has members such as BP, Chevron and Shell, while the IPIECA, formerly known as the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association, also has seats at the best tables at Cop26.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma, who resigned his business secretary position in Boris Johnson's Tory government in order to concentrate on the Glasgow event, was stumped when Irish Independent reporter Caroline O'Doherty asked for a breakdown of fossil fuel firm delegates at the two-week event. 

He'd have to get back to her on that, he said, while insisting everything about the event was "pretty transparent".

Yes, it is pretty transparent. Fossil fuel and legacy industries with high emissions will continue to be the loudest voices in the room as the world burns unless a radical shift comes out of Cop26.

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