That Was The Week That Was 31 Jan-04 Feb 2022
Whereas, in an echo chamber, nobody else can hear you scream
To Toulouse, where the great and the good of European aviation gathered for yet another Aviation Summit. The great and the good were strictly limited for social distancing reasons to the 50 greatest and best. The next tranche of nearly as great and nearly as good were stuck attending remotely. The not particularly great or good – you and I, in other words – were kept, like peasants, behind the virtual gate, well away from the gilded festivities.
And ‘gilded’ is the correct word for what we were allowed to glimpse as the greatest and the bestest dined on words, fine words. To call this ‘rococo’ is to insult purple prose everywhere. The declaration that came out was exactly what you would image if you had asked 200 or so aviation organisations, industry players and governments to each bring a plate to a smorgasbord organised in honour of Louis XIV . For all the finery, for all the most expensive of ingredients, for all the fancy means of presenting the fare, for all the dishes on which it would be presented, it would have ‘organised by a committee’ written all over it. Who could have predicted that? That it was produced in egalitarian, utilitarian, industrial, proud of its socialist history, engineer-driven Toulouse could not hide that it really wanted to be in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.
As with the imaginary Louis XIV smorgasbord, all the food groups were present. The declaration talks about all the right things. Decarbonisation, non-CO2 emissions, multi-modal, social issues, baskets of measures, regional as well as global initiatives, SAFs, accountability and COP26. But, there are also very fattening and cholesterol-heavy bits likely to see the Sun King reach for the Alka-Selzer. Extra support, need to build resilience and remarkably, not one, not one mention of tax. Financial incentives, sure.
At the risk of coming on a bit legal here, the bits that talk about the hard things are in the introduction to the declaration. These are what is known in the law as the Recitals. They are often, extremely inelegantly, referred to as the ‘Whereas’ clauses. Those clauses have one role. After twenty years, the points made in the recitals can be taken as fact, without further need to produce evidence, in the event of a dispute. Apart from that somewhat esoteric value, they are meaningless.
Speaking of which, this declaration was saluted on social media by any and every entity that signed it. Then those posts were liked and retweeted. Those retweets were then retweeted as well. Out in the real world, none of this got picked up. We have told ourselves, over and over, just how marvelous the entire process was and what dainty dishes were set before the king, but the four and twenty blackbirds merely tweeted amongst ourselves.