What a hoot. The global warming cult have finally learned their lesson and decided to hold this year’s annual Cop gabfest somewhere that is actually hot. Previous cities, such as Copenhagen, Glasgow and Warsaw, have always struggled to overcome the fact that as the worthies lectured us about an ever-warming planet they did so through chattering teeth and with red-tipped noses. This year, presumably to avoid such embarrassing ‘optics’, Cop28 chose Dubai to be the host city. You can imagine the round-table meetings as Dubai was proposed. ‘But isn’t it the most oil-rich nation on earth?’ ‘Yes, but at least it will be HOT!’

Nature, however, always has a way of mocking human attempts to control her, and this year was no different. In a piece of theatre worthy of a Monty Python sketch, many of the delegates’ private jets were hilariously stuck in the icy snow on their European runways and unable to take off for Dubai thanks to the unprecedented levels of snow currently falling in Europe. In one image, a jet is literally pinned down under the weight of snow and ice. As one wag put it on social media, ‘It’s almost as if the Lear jets have glued themselves to the runway to protest against global boiling.’

The comedy didn’t stop there. With Australia sending our most ludicrous politician, Climate Change and Energy Minister and nuclear-phobic Chris Bowen along with 48 of his over-paid and equally zealous Canberra bureaucrats to hobnob with the climate cult in the desert sands, the opening salvo from Dubai was a pledge to increase global nuclear production. From which point on, the only Australian in attendance with any credibility was the privately funded Will Shackel; a 17-year-old founder of our first youth-led campaign for nuclear energy: Nuclear for Australia.

Yet again, and as is now customary, Canberra made a laughing stock of Australia at Cop28. This is a tradition that stretches all the way back to Kevin Rudd’s ‘greatest moral challenge/Chinese ratf—kers’ silliness at Cop16 and includes Scott Morrison’s more recent and successful attempt at Cop26 where he broke his solemn vow to the Australian people not to go beyond the Paris agreement and promptly consigned himself to electoral oblivion. Mr Morrison’s unsuccessful attempt to ingratiate himself with the Euro-climate crowd by adopting ‘net zero’ as Coalition policy not only gifted government to the Labor party, but came at the very worst moment: just as Europeans began to question the wisdom of net zero and to re-invest in fossil fuels.

Indeed, in his key address the president of this year’s ‘United Nations Conference Of The Parties on Climate Change’, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, pointed out that there is ‘no science’ to prove that using less fossil fuels will help battle climate change. Oops! Isn’t that exactly what The Spectator Australia’s very own climate sceptical Professor Ian Plimer has been saying all along?

Which, let’s be frank, kind of makes the whole climate shebang a completely pointless exercise in bureaucratic hubris and political virtue-signalling. Readers of this magazine have known as much for years.

But for all the comedy there is an equal amount of tragedy. The tragedy is that Cop28 could have been the moment when Australia literally grabbed the future and put ourselves at the forefront of the global nuclear industry. Allow us to remind you of the editorial we published on this page on 10 July, 2021 – a full ten months before the Coalition unnecessarily lost to Anthony Albanese:

Scott Morrison and the Coalition have a unique opportunity to go to the next election with their own version of the GST: pledging to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy in Australia on the first day of a new Parliament. The pitch is simple: ‘If you really believe in net zero emissions, nuclear power is the only way to get us there whilst keeping us economically strong. But to do so we need a solid majority in both Houses of Parliament’. Lifting the moratorium on nuclear power would also allow us to lease or buy US nuclear subs off the shelf as an immediate and powerful deterrent to any malicious intentions being harboured to our north. Watch the Left tear themselves apart in a frenzy. And watch the Coalition romp in at the next election.

One conservative politician did heed our sound advice, and that was Peter Dutton, now opposition leader and poised to be our next prime minister, according to Kevin Andrews in this week’s cover story and also Judith Sloan.

Mr Dutton has committed his Coalition government to nuclear energy. In the meantime, watch Cop28 and weep. A comedy and a tragedy rolled into one. And an incredibly expensive one at that.