The big takeaway from Cop27? These climate conferences just aren’t working | Bill McGuire

Rather than a bloated global talking shop, we need something smaller, leaner and fully focused on the crisis at hand

• Bill McGuire is Prof Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL

In the end, the recent shenanigans at the Cop27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh at least ended up making modest progress on loss and damage: high-emissions nations agreeing to pay those countries bearing the brunt of climate mayhem that they had little to do with bringing about.

But, yet again, there was no commitment to cutting the emissions causing accelerating this crisis, without which this agreement is nothing more - as one delegate commented - than a down-payment on disaster". No seasoned observers are of the opinion that the world is any nearer tackling the climate emergency. Indeed, the real legacy of Cop27 could well be exposing the climate summit for what it has become, a bloated travelling circus that sets up once a year, and from which little but words ever emerge.