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Best of the Spectator

The Edition: Cop out

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4785 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week’s episode: Can Cop26 deliver on its grand promises?
In our cover story this week, Fraser Nelson assesses the state of the upcoming Cop26 summit in Glasgow and questions their very effectiveness in dealing with climate change in a world of global players with very different priorities. He is joined on the podcast by reporter Jess Shankleman, who is covering Cop26 for Bloomberg. (00:48)

‘This one’s in Glasgow, but you’d best think of it as the Edinburgh Festival for environmentalism. Lots of fun, lots of debates, lots of protests, lots of street action, but not really any much of concrete substance.’ – Fraser Nelson
 

Also this week: Is it moral to bribe your child to go to church?
Theo Hobson is paying his daughter to go to church and get confirmed. But how holy is this practice? Theo's idea is judged on the podcast by a holy trinity of priests: Steve Morris, Daniel French, and Nicholas Cranfield. (13:28)

 ‘I’d be very worried if there was a suggestion that they as younger people are being prevailed upon to answer the right questions and say ‘actually Dad I do now believe!’ Simply for the exchange of some filthy lucre.’ – Rev. Nicholas Cranfield

 
And finally: What are the ups and downs of book clubs?
Author Elisa Segrave was cancelled from a book club event after an email of hers apparently ‘hurt’ some members. This inspired her analysis of the book club concept for this week’s Spectator. Along with Simon Savidge the founder of Savidge Reads, she talks about her and her friends' bumpy relationship with book clubs. (25:10)

‘I was always really excited for what that next choice would be because it was like a mystery until that final moment or final glass of wine.’ – Simon Savidge


Hosted by Lara Prendergast

Produced by Sam Holmes

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management, award-winning wealth managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you.

0:09.2

Visit can-dowealth.com to start building your wealth with confidence.

0:26.4

Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator.

0:32.9

Every week we take a look at some of the most important and intriguing stories from the issue with the writers behind them.

0:35.8

I'm Lara Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor.

0:40.2

This week, can COP26 deliver on its grand promises?

0:44.3

Plus, is it moral to bribe your child to go to church?

0:47.9

And finally, what are the ups and downs of book clubs?

0:51.3

First up, in our cover story this week,

0:55.6

Fraser Nelson assesses the state of the upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow and questions their very effectiveness in dealing with climate change in a world of global players with very different priorities.

1:03.0

Fraser joins me now, along with reporter Jess Shankillman, who's covering COP for Bloomberg.

1:08.0

Jess, let's start with the basics. What is COP 26 which starts this weekend actually

1:12.3

hoping to achieve? That's kind of the million dollar question. And I've been thinking about this

1:17.0

a bit before we started talking because I think one of the problems with defining success at this

1:23.1

COP is it's not actually binary. Like if you look back to Paris or Copenhagen, they were trying to

1:29.6

achieve a global deal on cutting emissions. This time round, it's quite a lot more nuanced. And the

1:36.7

negotiations themselves are just around finishing the Paris rulebook so whether they can create a global

1:43.0

carbon market. So what you've kind of got is a lot of

1:47.7

other add-ons. So the Paris Agreement said that by 2020, we're saying 2021, because obviously we lost a

1:55.8

year in the pandemic, countries had to come back with bigger pledges to try and close the emissions

2:00.6

gap so that they could

2:01.5

try and get on course for limiting global warming to that goal of 1.5 to well below 2 degrees.

...

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