When we come to write the history of global warming, the outcome of December’s Copenhagen Climate Conference will occupy much of the section about 2009. The Abu Dhabi grand prix, which closed this year’s Formula One season in early November, might prove a good prologue. If nothing else, the event showcased the combination of vested interests and the culture of consumption that make the task of Copenhagen delegates so hard.

Flagrant waste of fossil fuels and grand prixs were once the preserve of the west; now other countries are joining in. The globalisation of car-focused industrialisation and Formula One have seen both spread to the Gulf (the UAE and Bahrain), South America (Brazil) and east Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and China), with an Indian grand prix to come in 2011.

Yas Marina, the £800m circuit in the United Arab Emirates where the grand prix was held, is part of what is said to be a £13bn development on artificial islands. Its immaculate road surface snakes in and out of some of the key developments of this experiment in fantasy urban planning: hotels, marinas and trophy yachts, office and apartment blocks. Rising alongside them are Ferrari World and a Warner Bros theme park, the gargantuan Yas Mall and a world championship golf course.

It would be hard to assemble a more odious coalition of interests for climate negotiators to deal with: authoritarian oil states bent on unsustainable growth, big oil companies, the car industry, and the speculators and financial service providers who fuel property bubbles. Formula One could not be in better company.

The 2009 season has revealed a ruthlessness and reckless insensitivity among the sport’s managerial elite. In a controversy about passing, Lewis Hamilton claimed he was told to lie to race stewards by then McLaren sporting director Dave Ryan. Worse, Flavio Briatore, head of the Renault team, was banned from the sport for life following a race-fixing scandal that involved a driver being ordered to crash his car. And when interviewed by the Times, de facto Formula One controller Bernie Ecclestone revealed political tastes even more exotic than the sexual preferences of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) president Max Mosley. Ecclestone, whose private companies manage the media rights and stage the races, praised Hitler’s efficient style of government and his ability to “get things done.”

The actual governance of the sport has proved as chaotic and fractured as policymaking was in the Third Reich. The FIA, the umbrella organisation for all motor sports, which sets the technical standards for Formula One, spent the year at loggerheads with the teams and their commercial backers. In an attempt to arrest the ever-spiralling costs of maintaining a competitive Formula One team (around £250m a year) it put forward new cost-cutting technical specifications. These, and the irascible negotiating style of Mosley, met with such fierce resistance that over half the teams were ready to set up an alternative series of races. Mosley, incidentally, is the man that Ecclestone thinks would make a good prime minister.

Peace has broken out since but the underlying problems of Formula One remain unaddressed. The cost of competing, in an era of global downturn, has led to Honda, BMW and Toyota quitting; Renault may follow. And sponsors, who provide over a third of teams’ running costs, are wobbling. Financial services group ING has abandoned Renault in part because it is broke, but there are murmurs that the sport is not consistent with the increasing environmental commitments of big companies.

In 2007, Formula One promised to engage with the issues. Teams have looked at their carbon footprints. Honda, without a trace of irony, painted the planet Earth all over its cars. Some have argued that money spent on research and development will result in trickle-down green technologies, as with the space programme. All of this is just window dressing. What Abu Dhabi demonstrated is that Formula One is in the business of fantasy.

Yas Marina takes its architectural cue from the digital world; its pristine verges, smoked-glass boxes and gleaming white walls are true to the aesthetic of dehumanised PlayStation circuits. Here flourish the dreams of hyper-industrialisation without environmental consequences, technological development unhinged from social need.

Last year saw the launch of Formula Zero, a competition for hydrogen-cell powered go-karts. I’d like to believe it might offer a palliative to the 600m people worldwide who watch some form of motor racing—but I don’t think so. As the delegates at Copenhagen know, the idea that we can adjust, adapt and replace our current ways of life without significant loss or disruption is a pipe dream. Some things have just got to stop. Some things have just got to go, like Formula One and its fantasies.

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