A Few Notes on Failed Environmental Policy

Or, How a proposal to mitigate oil spills reveals the depth of our political challenge

Next week COP16, the international biodiversity conference, will open in Cali, Colombia. When the world last met in Montréal, Canada in 2022, there were grand plans announced to try to protect 30% of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems—albeit under a model of so-called environmental activism that has historically been used to drive Indigenous and other r…