The United Nations COP 30 in Belém, Brazil, was not the decisive gathering that changed the world and set us speeding towards climate redemption. Regardless of the usual pre-conference hype, that was never really to be expected. But a final statement that refused to even mention fossil fuels, let alone a roadmap to phasing out the emissions that are destroying the planet verges on the absurd. “Don’t mention oil,coal or gas” – if you want to get a final closing statement adopted. As climate scientist Michael Mann put it, “a climate deal without explicit language calling for a fossil fuel phaseout is like a ceasefire without explicit language calling for a suspension of hostilities.”
10 years after the landmark Paris Agreement, when the world agreed global warming should be allowed to reach 1.5°C at the most, we should be in a different place. Alas, as Johan Rockström, Earth system scientist and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact put it:
“COP30 was declared to be the COP of ‘truth and implementation’. Scientifically, this was an appropriate label. But leaders gathered in Belém failed to fulfil this promise. The ‘truth’ is that our only chance of ‘keeping 1.5°C within reach’, is to bend the global curve of emissions downward in 2026 and then reduce emissions by at least 5% per year. ‘Implementation’ requires concrete roadmaps to accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels and the protection of nature. We got neither.”
Writing in The Atlantic, science journalist Peter Brannen comments:
“As things stand, the UN projects that current policies will result in almost 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. Unfortunately, that 1.5-degree benchmark wasn’t selected at random. As one landmark paper puts it, the “Earth may have left a safe climate state beyond 1°C global warming,” and even 1.5 degrees would possibly invite inexorable ice-sheet collapse, coral-reef die-off, and permafrost thaw.”
We have already crossed that 1.5°C ceiling for global temperature rise temporarily. We are set to have overshot it formally, in the terms of the Paris Agreement, within five to ten years.
The Earth League – an international network of scientists including Johan Röckstrom and James Dyke, Assistant Director of the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, recently published their views on how to proceed in a world that is overshooting that critical mark. Their conclusions are that humanity is “living beyond limits”.
“Exceed 1.5°C and not only do extreme climate events, like droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves grow in number and severity, impacting billions of people, we also approach tipping points for large Earth regulating systems like the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Tropical coral reef systems, livelihood for over 200 million people, are unlikely to cope with overshoot.
The scientists say we can expect these extreme events within just a few years, and the “tipping points” could be just decades away:
“We are now at a critical juncture. We are at or very close to human caused environmental change that will fundamentally unpick the life-sustaining systems on Earth. These risk triggering feedback loops, for example, the accelerating die back of rainforests which would release billions of tons of carbon dioxide which would raise temperatures even further”.
Scary?
The Earth League warns the planet could drift along the pathway to “hothouse Earth”, a scenario where even if emissions were reduced, self amplifying feedback loops would drive global temperature increases up to or even beyond 5°C.
“The last time the climate warmed by such an amount was tens of millions of year ago”, they remind us.
We do not want to go there.
Vicious climate circle
The warmer it gets, the harder it is to stop things from getting worse.
“Increasingly destructive storms will produce more loss and damages, more loss of life. Efforts to accelerate – or even maintain – decarbonisation could be undermined by social and political destabilisation created by climate change,” the group warns.
We still have the ability to minimise overshoot, Rockström and his colleagues say:
“The best science can offer today, is a future where peak warming reaches 1.7°C before returning to within 1.5°C in 75 years.”
For that, we need action at a global scale, and on multiple fronts, starting with that fossil fuel phase-out which was so controversial in the Brazil conference. It would need to happen at least ten times faster than countries are currently planning. The global food system would have to be transformed within the next decade; we need new ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere both by restoring forests and wetlands and using new approaches, and “we must do all we can to ensure continued “health” and resilience in nature on land and in the ocean, in order to safeguard Earth’s capacity to store carbon,” the experts conclude.
A tall order?
“Science is crystal clear here. Our only chance to recover back to a stable and safe climate is to accelerate the phase-out of fossil-fuels, remove carbon and invest in nature (on land and in the ocean), and do that without trading off between them.”
Quo vadis, COP?
So how do we get there? And what role do the annual UN COP meetings play, if they can conclude without even mentioning oil, coal and gas?
“Every year, environmental NGOs, climate scientists, concerned citizens, and government ministers alike register confusion and despair over the fact that after so many cycles of these meetings, industrial civilization erupts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than ever before. This year, it reached a staggering new peak with 38.1 gigatons of the stuff—two orders of magnitude more than is put out by all of the volcanoes on Earth combined each year, and a pace that is virtually unprecedented in all of geological history, “ writes Peter Brannen. He says the COP itself has become an “annual punching bag”for climate inaction. Still, he concludes:
“Obviously, we need an international body to convene and coordinate around such a dire planetary challenge.”
Even climate scientist Dyke, in an article on the COP with the scathing title “About as much use as a chocolate fireguard”, has to admit:
“When it comes to getting international consensus on climate change, there do not seem to be any more plausible alternatives than the UNFCC.”
So what is going wrong with these meetings? The trouble is that the conference has to achieve “consensus” on decisions. In the second week of the Belém negotiations, dozens of countries backed plans to agree on roadmaps to guide the move away from fossil fuels and deforestation. However, countries including oil giant Saudi Arabia were able to prevent this from being included in the final statement. As Michael Mann puts it in his analysis entitled “Bad COP”, a “small number of rogue nations has been blocking progress for the rest of the world”.
Exeter climate expert James Dyke outlines their motives:
“Oil and gas accounts for 55% of the Saudi Arabian government’s entire revenue. Net income of oil and gas companies in the United States in 2025 was $301 billion. What these numbers shows is that a rapid fossil fuel phase out represents an existential risk to the current Saudi government, perhaps even nation. The US could continue to prosper in a post-fossil fuel world, but many of the existing centres of economic and political power would vanish. Is it any surprise that these and other fossil fuel reliant nations continue to thwart climate action?”
Still, he says, the annual UN climate extravaganza is not a complete waste of time:
“One reason to not ditch the process is these annual events provides a mechanism whereby those nations most vulnerable to climate change can exert some sort of power on much wealthier nations. They do that by joining together to try and produce a louder collective voice, says Dyke.
“Mend it don’t end it” (Michael Mann)
An increasing number of experts and public figures are calling for fundamental changes to the UNFCCC rules. One suggestion has been a rule change requiring 75% percent majority rather than a “consensus” of all countries for reaching an agreement. The problem is that you need a consensus among participating nations to agree to changing the rules. Unless, as climate champion Michael Mann suggests, you interpret the terms differently:
“Consensus is not “unanimity”, though it has been convenient for the few major holdouts to insist otherwise. “Consensus” is typically defined e.g. as “a generally accepted decision among a group of people”. By such a definition, three-fourths support seems more than adequate to constitute “consensus” and, thereby, pass an agreement, under current rules, that meets the moment and commits to a rapid phaseout of planet-warming fossil carbon emissions.”
He suggests economic sanctions could be imposed on those who refuse to sign up, mentioning Saudi Arabia, Russia and his home the USA, at least under the current administration.
During last year’s COP, controversially held for the second year in a row in a petrostate (Azerbaijan following Dubai) a group of leading climate policy experts suggested the current format was not fit for purpose. The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockström.
They suggested to the UN that the current complex process of annual “conferences of the parties” under the UN framework convention on climate change – the Paris agreement’s parent treaty – should be streamlined, and meetings held more frequently, with more of a voice given to developing countries.
The influential climate leaders also suggested future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying. This year’s COP in Belém was attended by more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists This means that lobbyists from the oil, gas and coal industries outnumbered every single country’s delegation, except from host nation Brazil.
In June this year, at the COP30 preparatory talks in UNFCCC’s headquarters in Bonn, Germany, more than 200 civil society and Indigenous peoples’ groups released a joint statement calling for major reforms, from the decision-making process to rules for corporate involvement.
Reshape from within, build up new venues outside
While there has been no progress on overhauling the process as a whole, things have been happening within the COP gatherings and on the sidelines which take climate protection forward. Ottmar Edenhofer, climate economist and the second PIK Director, sees potential for the COP to develop into a more innovative platform for designing policy initiatives:
“In Belém, it was discussed how air and sea transport could be taxed. The debate on climate tariffs was controversial, but helped to make the connection between climate and trade clear. A major initiative to finance global rainforest protection has been launched, and minilateral agreements between China and the EU to finance emission reductions emerge as an option for the future. Even if many of these projects are currently still fraught with problems: the COP should strengthen its profile in terms of launching and evaluating promising climate action initiatives.”
Other moves see new venues being created where “coalitions of the willing” can agree measures which fail to find unanimous acceptance in the UN format. Colombia led a group of several dozen nations at Cop30 pushing for a just transition from fossil fuels. They then joined the Netherlands to announce they will hold a first international conference on the transition away from fossil fuels in Colombia next year.
Cut the demand for fossil fuels
Another key option is to tackle the emissions problem from the demand and consumption side. More than 80 percent of industrial civilization is still powered by fossil fuels. We can change that. As climate scientist James Dyke puts it:
“Stop trying to get Saudi Arabia to stop pumping oil and gas, and instead focus efforts on getting other nations to reduce their demand for fossil fuels. This could be done with treaties and economic incentives to, for example, accelerate the deployment of renewable energy systems that would replace legacy fossil fuel energy generation. We could go further and suggest that by reducing total energy demand, the job becomes easier. That’s one of the starting assumptions of post-growth economics.”
Without getting into the debate over growth or post-growth here – whatever happened to the focus on energy saving and energy efficiency? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly dominating public discourse and influencing our economies and societies, creating a huge demand for more and more electricity. Should we not give priority to supplying clean, affordable energy and making it available for all?
This year, new wind and solar power will more than meet growing demand for electricity globally, keeping fossil fuel consumption flat, analysts project.
Solar continues its exponential growth, with countries projected to add a third more solar energy than they did last year, according to figures from energy think tank Ember.
China and India have both seen a small downturn in fossil power, offsetting rising consumption in the U.S. and E.U., according to Ember. Worldwide, wind and solar are outpacing rising demand for electricity, meaning fossil fuel use will stay flat this year for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic. Ember analyst Nicolas Fulghum said that “fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline.”
We have missed our chance to keep global warming below the 1.5°C threshold. We must cut emissions drastically to get the temperature back down. Over the past 50 years, the population has more than doubled, energy and food production have more than tripled.
“The ability to recover from an overshoot trajectory and to avoid further transgression of other planetary boundaries is highly dependent on reducing overall consumption”, writes James Dyke from the Earth League.
We can all make a contribution there.
Rockström, Dyke, Schellnhuber and other world-leading climate scientists tell us:
“Humanity faces its ultimate challenge due to its failure so far in addressing the escalating risks, which are pushing the world into a deepening crisis. We have to rapidly adopt new pathways that reduce negative impacts and optimize regeneration. Today, we exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain life, depriving billions of basic needs amid rising conflict. Yet, with collective will, we can bridge the gap between knowledge and action to safeguard life-support on Earth.”
It’s in our hands.
