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The vineyards of Lebanon were collapsing, the bankers were prospering, and the country was beginning to resemble a science-fiction novel in which aliens had taken over the financial system.
At COP31 in Türkiye, the diplomats were still trying to determine whether this qualified as a climate emergency or an accounting problem.
Abdelnaser Ossman, for one, has already received the bill.
At 55, this grape farmer in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley has survived drought, war, financial collapse and the prolonged political experiment known as the Lebanese Republic. His family has cultivated the land for generations. Now fertilizer and fuel have doubled in price, labor costs have quintupled, and the grapes themselves fetch half what they once did.
The arithmetic is extraterrestrial. Even the grapes are probably considering emigration.
“This land is my soul,” Ossman recently lamented in The New York Times.
And the soul, apparently, is being liquidated.
British science-fiction veteran M. John Harrison has spent decades exploring precisely this kind of nightmare: a world where catastrophe becomes ordinary, familiar institutions turn alien, and nobody can explain the forces dismantling everyday life.
His Booker-winning novel, "The End of Everything," imagines Britain occupied by mysterious aliens called the iGhetti. Nobody understands where they came from or what they want.
One popular theory holds that they emerged from the internet.
Naturally.
Where else? Even the ETs have apparently discovered that the quickest way to destroy civilization is to give everybody a platform.
Harrison describes his novel as an exploration of the failure of explanation in society. Lebanon has been inhabiting that nightmare for decades, except its monsters are entirely human, their methods depressingly familiar, and most of them have excellent lawyers.
COP31 now powwowing in Türkiye ought to call it Exhibit A.
Lebanon is what happens when climate vulnerability collides with war, financial collapse and a ruling class determined to survive whatever happens to everybody else.
The World Bank warns that climate change could halve Lebanon’s dry-season water availability by 2040. Farmers face soaring costs, families struggle to buy food, and businesses burn expensive diesel because the national electricity grid barely functions.
The economy is forecast to contract 6.4% this year. Inflation is expected to exceed 17%. An International Labor Organization survey found that one in three private-sector workers surveyed was no longer employed.
These are meals skipped, medicines abandoned, school fees unpaid and family land sold to survive another season.
Which brings us to the one demand COP31 should be judged against: a binding commitment to direct, independently audited climate-adaptation funding for fragile states, with every dollar publicly traceable and every payment tied to measurable results.
This would set a dangerous precedent: Money intended to solve a crisis might actually solve it, rather than financing the people hired to explain why it hasn't been solved.
Back in bombed-out Beirut, Rayah Sakr operates a co-working space called Submarine, a name suggesting either entrepreneurial optimism or a sensible survival strategy for rising seas.
Her monthly generator bill has approached $1,600. With state electricity available only a few hours daily, private diesel operators have transformed a public utility into a profitable hostage situation.
Burn more diesel to survive today. Accelerate the warming that threatens tomorrow. Pay a fortune for the privilege.
The iGhetti would bow before such inspired exploitation.
Now imagine adaptation funding reaching businesses like hers: solar power, battery storage and financing that reduces dependence on diesel. Or reliable irrigation reaching Ossman before he sells his grandfather’s land.
This is what climate finance should accomplish. Not another international bureaucracy manufacturing glossy reports about resilience while the intended beneficiaries go bankrupt.
Lebanon’s real invaders require no interplanetary transportation. They arrived wearing expensive suits, carrying banking licenses and promising national reconstruction.
The financial system imploded in 2019. Beirut’s port exploded in 2020. Wars followed wars. Savings vanished.
And the political establishment continued its ancient ritual: distributing blame while retaining power.
Economist Sibylle Rizk describes an elite determined to preserve the political and financial order that sustains it.
A marvelous invention. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, and call the wreckage a national emergency.
Pour climate money into that machinery without oversight and it could disappear faster than a Lebanese bank deposit.
The COP31 commitment must therefore be enforceable: publish budgets, identify contractors, audit spending, verify projects and suspend payments when money goes astray.
For Lebanon, success means functioning solar installations, dependable water, restored irrigation and lower energy bills. The test is simple: Can the funding be traced from donor to delivery?
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam confronts a monstrous assignment: rebuild a state while its foundations crumble beneath him.
His economy minister, Amer Bisat, invokes an Arabic proverb: “The eye can see, but the hand is short.”
Behold the official motto of COP31. Crown Bisat with organic parsley, hoist him onto a giant lettuce leaf and parade him through Antalya as the patron saint of climate diplomacy: blessed with perfect vision and arms too short to reach the wallet.
The diplomats see Lebanon’s catastrophe clearly enough. They simply cannot bring themselves to pay for preventing the next one.
Harrison’s aliens remain incomprehensible. Lebanon’s catastrophe has names, addresses, balance sheets and political patrons.
In the Bekaa, a farmer struggles to afford another harvest. In Beirut, a businesswoman struggles to keep the lights on. At COP31, diplomats struggle to turn promises into payments.
Their credibility rests on whether the farmer can plant and the businesswoman can operate without burning diesel. Everything else is conference stationery.
No spaceship is coming. The ETs were never visitors.
They were the management.
And naturally, management has scheduled a follow-up meeting.
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