By Mike Foley

Copyright brisbanetimes

COP is a huge event drawing tens of thousands of delegates from nations around the globe for up to two weeks of negotiations over strategies to reduce greenhouse pollution and ease global warming.

It is unclear how the potential dual hosting duties would play out in practice and officials stressed that details would be subject to negotiation. If the conference is hosted between countries, the extra travel that would be required of delegates who may attend meetings in Turkey and Australia raises questions over the carbon footprint of an event that is convened to cut emissions.

Around 65,000 people attended the previous COP in Azerbaijan, including delegates, lobbyists and corporate representatives. To take an extreme example, which is unlikely to eventuate, this would generate hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions if all of these people took passenger flights between Europe and Australia.

A return flight from London to Australia generates about 4 tonnes of carbon pollution per passenger or around 260,000 tonnes for the entire cast of Azerbaijan.