“Today’s Fossil Prize goes to…”

Once the sun sets in Dubai, a crushing melody invades the air. Jurassic Park tunes start echoing loudly on the main road to Climate Summit. The attendees look at each other in confusion, trying to understand what is going on. Suddenly, a spotlight lit up on the improvised stage, and a masked knight took the floor. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most embarrassing awards ceremony in history,” he shouted. He added in a cheerful tone to dozens of curious people: “These are today’s fossil awards. To the most polluting. To the most hypocritical. To the great fraudsters who are among us at this summit.”

For several days now, a group of activists from the environmental platform Climate Action Network have been handing out these satirical awards to companies, countries and entities that are “behaving hypocritically” during this climate summit. These “notorious awards” were actually given to the United States “for being the world’s largest oil and gas producer”; Russia “to keep pushing for oil deals”; Japan, “continues coal withdrawal despite availability of alternatives”; and Vietnam, “for talking about green policies while imprisoning the country’s leading environmentalists.” One of them was also handed over to the European Union for being “the first major pollution hotspot on the planet” and “obstructing negotiations on the Climate Crisis Damage and Loss Fund.”

“These awards are meant to recognize the efforts of those countries that are the best at being the worst. To all those who do their best to do as little as possible. To all those who argue for hours and hours about a comma, a parenthesis or a word instead of making real decisions that help deal with This crisis,” the broadcaster explains, wondering whether among the audience are representatives of award-winning countries who dare to receive the award and climb to the podium, the most “polluted and hypocrites.” Meanwhile, next to him, a giant dinosaur fossil shakes its claws in celebration of the stance of those “rooted in the past” who like him “refuse to eradicate fossils from their borders.”