Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin may have missed the RSVP deadline for the UN's most recent last chance to save the planet extravaganza now being held in Glasgow, or perhaps had special reasons to intentionally dodge the fundraiser.
I'm guessing it's the latter case.
After all, the attendance fee is pretty steep.
First, all of the big VIP participants are expected to take an oath of penance in forms of fossil energy poverty pledges of massive reparation payments to other countries for having caused climate damage.
On top of that, the timing couldn't be worse, coming during pain of pandemic economic recessions and upon the arrival of a global winter heating season fuel shortage.
Meanwhile, as China builds coal plants at a frenetic pace and Russia holds Europe hostage for natural gas price hikes, President Joe Biden now begs OPEC for relief from his own anti-drilling policies that ended Trump's brief era of achieving U.S. energy independence.
Ironically, Biden stated at the meeting: "I think you're going to see we made progress and more has to be done, but it's going to require us to continue to focus on what China's not doing, what Russia's not doing and what Saudi Arabia [whose leader also didn't attend] is not doing."
This, after he asked them to pump even more of that alleged climate-ravaging oil.
A Prosperity Destruction and Redistribution Agenda
The UN's Congress of Parties (COP26) meeting, meaning 26th of an annual series, has two primary objectives: to persuade all national representatives to pledge to reach "net zero" greenhouse-gas emissions by some future date — perhaps 2050 — and to convince developed countries to pay poor countries to sign up for additional CO2 reductions.
The developed nations have already overpromised and underdelivered both on their emission cuts and financial contributions.
With much gratitude to the fracking revolution, America is the only country to come close to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction targets.
And discovering that their taxpayers are far less willing to sacrifice their own cash to end billions of years of climate change than their more generous politicos, the $100 billion annual pledge rich countries first made in 2009 still hasn't appeared.
According to the Organization for Economic Development, a club for wealthy countries, the developed nations had accounted for $80 billion in climate financing in 2019, the most recent year for which data are available.
Since then, the Biden administration has pledged to double U.S. contributions to $11.4 billion by 2024, making America by far the biggest single benefactor. This will be problematic given that his green energy climate spending agenda is being gutted during attempts to push it through a Congress run by his own party.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is calling for an annual "floor" of $100 billion over the next five years, with $367 billion going to them alone.
South Africa's environment minister has presented the world's wealthiest countries with an annual bill of more than $750 billion to shift away from fossil fuels. And India says its climate-change plan alone will cost more than $2.5 trillion through 2030.
Nevertheless, Delhi's environment minister has suggested that his government won't sign up for net zero. With several hundred million Indians still living in poverty, world number-three CO2 emitter India needs more energy from fossil fuels, just as does all of Africa.
In addition, developing nations want a big portion of the money to come as government grants rather than loans, each guided and controlled according to their own requirements ... for example, demonstrating that a climate project advances "gender equality."
Yes, Session 13 of COP26 specifically addresses the topic "Climate and Gender."
A Big Win for China; A Minus-Net-Zero Gain for America
By weakening the economies of the West, net zero is boosting a rising China along with its leverage over America in bilateral economic and trade policies and other issues far more important to U.S and global security than climate change.
Let's also remember that China controls 80% of the global rare earth minerals, including lithium, that will be needed to supply those so-called green "technologies to decarbonize industry and power."
President Xi Jinping promised in 2020 to reduce climate emissions — but only after 2030. He also said in April that China would begin "phasing down" its coal consumption in 2026.
In the here and now, China — the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter — is building the equivalent of about one new coal-fired plant weekly to meet higher economic priorities.
A recent global energy shortage, including coal which powers around 56% of China's industry-heavy economy, has given Beijing cause to rethink its climate commitments.
Amid escalating coal shortages and power outages and growing demands, the world's No. 2 economy is so large and still growing so quickly that it might not be technically possible, let alone politically palatable at home, to wean the country away from fossils any time soon.
According to tallies of Chinese data by Greenpeace, the nation's provincial governments have approved 24 domestic coal plants in the first half of 2021, more than what's currently installed in coal-hungry Japan and Russia combined.
Renewable Pipedreams Fuel Russia's Pipeline Profits
Joe Biden gave Vladimir Putin an enormous gift by canceling America's Keystone XL pipeline and drilling permits on public lands and waters while simultaneously approving Russia's completion of its 764-mile Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic to provide natural gas to Europe that the U.S. could have supplied.
European natural gas prices have risen nearly 600 percent in the past year, and Gazprom, primarily owned by the Russian state, already provides about 35 percent of those supplies.
The EU has every bad reason to worry that Russia will use its energy life support supply leverage to Moscow's economic and strategic international policy advantages.
Ukraine has learned this lesson the hard way when Gazprom cut off its gas supply for 13 days during a 2009 dispute where the painful effects were also felt in Poland and other European countries.
Nord Stream 2 now poses additional problems for Ukraine, bypassing the country's current Russia pipeline which provides about $2 billion in annual transit fees accounting for approximately 3 percent of its GDP.
The bottom line here is that so long as Western Europe goes for net zero, the Kremlin's energy leverage over Europe — and by extension America — will only increase.
We can also be certain that while Xi and Vlad sit out attendance at the Glasgow Gala, they won't miss any opportunities to exploit plus zero advantages afforded them by resulting dependency consequences of U.S. and EU policy folly.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.