The 2025 UN climate conference failed to produce a meaningful outcome. Ten years after the historic Paris Climate Agreement at COP21, 194 countries assembled for COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more COP30: A Climate Summit Undone by Fossil Fuels The 2025 UN climate conference failed to produce a meaningful outcome. Ten years after the historic Paris Climate Agreement at COP21, 194 countries assembled for COP30 in Belém, Brazil. Richard Matthews Dec 9   READ IN APP   The 2025 UN climate conference failed to produce a meaningful outcome. Ten years after the historic Paris Climate Agreement at COP21, 194 countries assembled for COP30 in Belém, Brazil. The final agreement, called the Global Mutirão decision, or the Belém Package, included 2 new mechanisms (trade and a just transition), but failed to make progress on key issues, including curtailing deforestation. The most glaring omission was the failure to even mention fossil fuels in the outcome document. The summit was punctuated by a fire, protests, water shortages, oppressive heat and torrential thunderstorms that flooded the Amazon venue. The tumultuousness of the climate conference in Belém mirrored the increasingly volatile climate and foreshadowed the end result. This year’s UN climate talks, framed against the backdrop of a steadily worsening climate crisis, are at best a major disappointment, even if the outcome was predictable. Persistent obstruction from petrostates once again derailed progress on the single most critical issue: phasing out fossil fuels. Even progress made in climate finance fell short of what is needed. Brief history of the UN’s Climate Change Conference of the Parties The annual climate talks, known as the Conference of the Parties (COP), have been meeting for more than 30 years. There has been slow progress, setbacks, and moments of great exaltation. Notable achievements include the agreements reached in Kyoto and Paris. The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty that committed industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Adopted in 1997 and entering into force in 2005, it set binding emission reduction targets for 37 industrialized nations and the European Union. The crowning achievement of the COP process is the landmark Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. At COP21, the world agreed to keep global average temperatures from surpassing 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial norms. What made this agreement so remarkable is the fact that for the first time, every nation on Earth rallied together in support of a multilateral effort to address the existential threat of climate change. This included wealthy nations from the Global North and developing nations from the Global South. World leaders, diplomats, businesses, investors, unions and civil society all came together in support of a clear scientific consensus. A total of 195 countries signed a binding global accord to avert catastrophic warming. Many saw this as an unprecedented turning point that would move us inexorably away from fossil fuels. However, reality has fallen short of these expectations. Since the Paris Agreement was announced, fossil fuel use has increased, and we have added 300 gigatons of climate change-causing carbon into the atmosphere. The Rising climate toll from greenhouse gases When the first COP was convened in 1995, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were around 360 parts per million (ppm). Currently, atmospheric carbon is above 426 ppm and increasing, well above the “safe” upper limit of 350 ppm. To have achieved the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, GHG emissions would have had to start declining in 2025. Instead, emissions keep increasing and so do global average temperatures (1.5°C above preindustrial norms in 2024). Referring to the findings in the 2025 Emissions Gap Report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres acknowledged that we have failed to keep temperatures within the prescribed limits. There is no disputing the fact that the world is getting hotter. We have consistently seen above-average temperatures every year since 1970, and the ten warmest years on record have all occurred in the last decade, with 2024 being the hottest year to date. Nearly every country in the world is being impacted by rising temperatures. Advances in attribution science show that increasing heat has contributed to more severe extreme weather. Climate-fueled disasters, including floods, droughts, and wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there were more than 12,000 extreme weather events between 1970 and 2021. These events cost $4.3 trillion and caused 2 million deaths. More recent data from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) indicates that in the last decade, extreme weather disasters cost more than $2 trillion. Scientists predict that both the cost and the death toll will continue to increase as the world warms. This does not include the far greater impacts associated with the breakdown of entire ecosystems. As 2025 climate talks drew to a close, Steven Victor, the environment minister of Palau, reminded the 60,000 delegates in attendance that climate change affects people’s livelihoods and lives. “Unless we choose the path of course correction right here and now, leaders are dooming our world to disaster,” Victor said. COP’s track record and renewable energy While there is well-warranted disappointment at the outcome of COP30, it is important to take stock of the fact that we would be much worse off without the COP process. Before the Paris Agreement, we were on track for between 3.7 and 4.8 degrees C of warming by 2100. If nations respect their Paris pledges, projected increases hover between 2.3°C and 3.4°C by 2100. The Paris Agreement has helped to spur a massive build-out of renewables alongside the growth of battery technologies and EVs. In 2015, EV sales were less than one percent of the global car market in 2025, they are around 25 percent. The rise of renewable energy has been nothing short of remarkable. Year after year, they have consistently outpaced expectations. Solar capacity is being installed 15 times faster than predicted by the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the cost has fallen by more than 90 percent. There is an undeniable global shift to renewables, especially in developing countries. In 2025, renewable energy was responsible for 40 percent of global electricity generation and 90 percent of new demand. Investment in renewable energy is now twice the amount flowing into fossil fuels. Climate negotiations were doomed from the beginning The outcome of COP30 could have been predicted before the first delegates arrived in Belém. Economic instability and geopolitical headwinds, including wars and the rising tide of right-wing populism, made progress at the 2025 UN climate conference almost impossible. a) Trump The most destabilizing individual in the world today is US President Donald Trump. Among his litany of lies, Trump has called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and referred to the COP process as a “scam”. Trump has abandoned the Paris Agreement, cancelled billions of dollars worth of clean energy projects, and aggressively advanced the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The US president is increasing oil extraction, including in ecologically sensitive areas like the Arctic, and he has goaded countries like Japan and South Korea into increasing their investments in fossil fuel production. Trump has also attacked countries for their science-based climate policies. During a bizarre UN speech, Trump said, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” In October, his administration used threats to prevent Europe from moving ahead with plans to levy a GHG tax on shipping. Although some were relieved that Trump declined to send a delegation to Belém, his bellicose lies only emboldened the recalcitrance of petrostates like Russia and Saudi Arabia. b) The end of consensus The global consensus upon which the COP process is premised has always been contentious, but it is much more difficult today. “Cops are consensus-based, and in a period of geopolitical divides, consensus is ever harder to reach,” explained the UN secretary general. This observation was echoed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who flatly told world leaders at the summit the “consensus is gone”. “Ten years ago, the world came together in Paris … united in our determination to tackle the climate crisis,” Starmer said. “The only question was how fast we could go. Today, however, sadly that consensus is gone.” Even rich countries that once championed climate action have lost their enthusiasm. c) Attacks against science The science is clear, and if anything, the climate models have understated the perilousness of our situation. Nonetheless, politically motivated attacks against climate science are increasing. As Ed Miliband, the UK’s Energy Secretary, explained, climate deniers and delayers are “well funded, well organized and determined”. Although Brazilian President Lula da Silva and other world leaders railed against misinformation and denial, unfounded assaults on climate science persist. In a Guardian article, Fiona Harvey quoted a COP30 representative who said, “they don’t listen, they don’t want to listen.” Instead, they argue against settled science, casting aspersions on the conclusions reached by the thousands of scientists who contribute to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is one of the casualties of the summit. In a marked departure from the past, the Belém Package does not recognize the IPCC as the best available science to guide policy. Panamanian negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez explained, science has been stymied at the 2025 climate negotiations because the facts are detrimental to polluters. Key outcomes of Global Mutirão Decision and the Belém Package It is against the backdrop of Trump’s lies, the breakdown of consensus, waning enthusiasm and attacks on science that COP President Andrei Lago launched his ill-fated call for Mutirão (coming together). Here are key outcomes from COP30 as they relate to climate finance, deforestation, trade, a just transition, and emissions reduction. a) Climate finance Climate finance is one of the pillars of the Paris Agreement. Article 9.1 lays out the legal obligation of developed countries to provide climate finance (adaptation and mitigation) for developing countries. Historic progress was made on climate finance at COP27. This year, the focus was on mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually as part of the Baku to Belém Roadmap. The Belém package finalizes the Baku Adaptation Roadmap and establishes the work plan for adaptation efforts from 2026 to 2028. While the package triples adaptation funding, $120 billion of the $300 billion was pushed back five years from 2030 to 2035. According to some estimates, the agreement falls short of the 360 billion per year, vulnerable countries need for adaptation. The Global Mutirão Decision acknowledges the need for more ambitious action on finance. b) Deforestation Brazil leveraged its position as host nation to push forest conservation. Although the roadmap to end deforestation was backed by about 92 nations, it did not get the unanimous support required to be included in the final COP30 agreement. So, there is no roadmap to meet the 2030 zero-deforestation pledge, and the COP28 target to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 was not renewed. However, the Forest and Land Tenure pledge was renewed, and a new Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment was launched to secure land rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. There was some progress outside the COP process. Brazil launched a forest protection investment fund called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF). The fund has already raised $6.7 billion, and they hope to raise a total of $125 billion from loans and investments. An additional $2.5 billion was raised for a forest initiative in Congo. c) Trade The Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade (IFCCT) is a new platform that aims to break down the traditional “silos” between climate and trade discussions. This is the first time that COP is working to align international trade with climate action, albeit in future talks. The IFCCT’s mandate is to explore ideas and generate non-binding, solution-oriented reference materials that help align global decarbonization efforts with trade. Participation in the IFCCT is open to all UNFCCC Parties, and discussions will cover topics such as the energy transition, carbon accounting methodologies, technology transfer, and the “climate value” of goods and services. It invites countries to use dialogue to find concrete solutions that combine climate action and sustainable development, rather than resorting to unilateral measures. d) Just Transition The new Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) was unanimously agreed upon at COP30. It is designed to ensure that the global shift away from high-carbon industries is equitable and inclusive for workers and communities. The aim is to increase international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing as countries shift towards a low-carbon global economy. JTM falls under the existing Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP). JTM will help people and communities in high-carbon industries make the shift to the clean economy. However, critical minerals–which are vital for renewable energy–was excluded from the final draft at the behest of China and Russia. e) Emissions reduction Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are national plans to reduce GHG emissions as laid out in the Paris Agreement. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) are initial pledges, once they are ratified, they are called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs are supposed to be filed every five years, and while 122 countries submitted new or updated NDCs ahead of or during COP30, 70 countries, including major polluters like India and Saudi Arabia, failed to file any NDC. Most of those that were received are insufficient. According to some estimates, current NDCs are only about one-sixth of the required emission reductions to stay within the 1.5°C target. There was no new INDC agreement at COP30. Instead, they focused on the implementation and enhancement of existing NDCs. To address the gap between existing and needed emissions cuts, two major initiatives were announced as part of the Belém Package: The Global Implementation Accelerator and the Belém Mission to 1.5°C. Several more countries joined the Blue NDC Challenge initiative, a national ocean-based climate action plan. Positive news from COP30 Even though the world’s largest economy did not attend COP30, everyone else stuck with the process. This prompted Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “No country, including the United States that is now being led by an anti-science, increasingly authoritarian Trump administration, can stop global climate action.” According to a 2024 poll, almost 90 percent of the general public support stronger political action on climate change, and the courts are increasingly holding polluters accountable. In 2025, the International Court of Justice ruled that nations are legally responsible for curbing GHGs. a) Strong support for phasing out fossil fuels Despite the disappointing outcome at the 2025 UN climate summit, it is important to remember that a broad global coalition supports a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. There are also other programs like the Action Agenda. It supports the implementation of the Paris Agreement. This includes efforts to intensify emission reductions, climate adaptation, and the transition to sustainable economies. The COP30 Action Agenda included 480 initiatives involving tens of thousands of businesses, investors, mayors, governors and civil society. More US businesses attended the climate summit in Belém than attended COP29 in Baku. Companies and investors see the writing on the wall; despite the American President’s deceptive screeds about cleantech, businesses know that the current American administration’s policies are irrational and cannot endure. The transition away from fossil fuels is unavoidable, and businesses have no choice but to prepare for a world that acknowledges the climate reality. b) Renewable energy is destined to replace fossil fuels Although fossil fuels still power much of the world, renewable energy is cheaper, and self-interest may motivate in ways that common sense and basic morality cannot. The Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty’s Alex Rafalowicz believes that bottom-line concerns are driving the transition to clean power sources. “The economics do demonstrate that the transition [to renewables] has an inevitability about it,” Rafalowicz said. At COP30, Miliband reiterated the point that market forces are causing fossil fuels to fade while the future for renewables is bright. China illustrates the point with one quarter of the country’s meteoric growth being due to its investments in cleantech. China currently has 70 percent of the EV market, and they have driven down the price of solar by 90 percent. Transitioning to renewables becomes increasingly inevitable as the price falls. More than one-third of the world’s electricity is now generated by renewables, and that number will keep increasing. Renewable energy has doubled between 2020 and 2025, and the IEA expects it to double again by 2030. Why COP30 was a failure Another COP has come and gone, yet emissions keep increasing, and we are running out of time. The goal of keeping temperatures 1.5°C below preindustrial norms has already slipped out of reach, and staying below the 2°C upper temperature limit seems increasingly unlikely. A 2025 report by Ripple et al warns that efforts to stem climate change remain “woefully insufficient, and that warming is already pushing the Earth into dangerous new territory”. We urgently need action in the transportation and agricultural sectors. We also need to improve our land use practices and industrial manufacturing, but most of all, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels. Nonetheless, Petrostates were once again allowed to hijack the outcome of the 2025 COP. “I had dreamed of bigger results,” Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva said as she tearfully acknowledged the loss at the closing plenary. Even the UN Secretary General was forced to concede defeat. “I cannot pretend that Cop30 has delivered everything that is needed. The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide,” Guterres said. A Colombian negotiator succinctly summarized the outcome as follows: “A consensus imposed under climate denialism is a failed agreement.” We are not meeting our Paris goals, and we will not be able to do so until we phase out oil, coal and gas. As quoted in a Guardian article, Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and professor of earth system science at the University of Potsdam, said COP30 did not deliver the needed change: “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% a year. [That] requires concrete roadmaps to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels,” Rockström said. Despite his best efforts, the president of COP30 failed to secure such a ‘road map’. At a time when we need bold action, the 2025 climate talks delivered what can at best be described as tiny advances. As explained by Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, small steps are not enough. “The world needs to start taking giant leaps to cut emissions, fast. I won’t sugar-coat it – the consequences will be terrifying if words aren’t turned into action soon,” Rehman said. Pledge your support Fossil fuels: The elephant in the room As the primary cause of climate change, fossil fuels are the elephant in the room. In a press conference in Belan, Miliband referred to the “global coalition” of 80 countries, 150 businesses and civil society groups that support phasing out fossil fuels. Miliband said they refuse to sweep the issue under the carpet, and they demand that fossil fuels be “at the heart of this conference.” Despite Miliband’s strong words, a handful of petrostates managed to strike any mention of fossil fuels from the COP30 final agreement. a) Impact of fossil fuels Seventy-five percent of the world’s GHG emissions since 2020 have come from fossil fuels, and according to the IEA, demand for dirty energy is likely to keep rising until 2050. Reducing GHGs is the primary objective of the UN convention, and to do so, we must radically reduce our use of coal, oil and gas. This is the opposite of what is happening. In the last 33 years, our use of fossil fuels has more than doubled. “The science is quite clear. Fossil fuels are making the planet hotter, and the best way to stop that heating is to phase them out,” explained Gómez. Lula da Silva summarized the reality of the present moment with the following words: “Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years.” In addition to climate change, the burning of oil, coal and gas is driving multiple crises. b) The fossil fuel industry’s control over the COP process It took three decades of climate summits and a century of science to get delegates to agree to transition away from dirty energy. Dubbed “the UAE consensus,” this historic achievement took place in 2023 at COP28 in Dubai. At the COP29 climate talks in Baku in 2024, Saudi Arabia and other petrostates killed an effort to follow-up on the UAE consensus. Despite Miliband’s call to find “creative” solutions and the host nation’s insistence that any efforts are completely “voluntary”, the words fossil fuels were excluded from the Belém package at the insistence of oil-producing Arab states and Russia. The failure of successive COPs has a lot to do with the army of fossil fuel industry lobbyists. The oil, gas and coal industry and their affiliates have flooded these summits with their advocates. The climate conference in Belém was no exception. According to Kick Big Polluters Out, 1 out of every 25 participants that attended the summit in Belém was a fossil fuel lobbyist. There were more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists on site at the 2025 UN climate summit. Just like COP 28 and COP29, the biggest winners at COP30 were, yet again, the world’s petrostates that successfully frustrated attempts to address the elephant in the room. The Panamanian negotiator summarized the sentiment of many when he said, “A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity.” c) The fossil fuel industry will not go quietly Countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and China can be expected to continue to defend the ongoing use of fossil fuel, so there is no way that we can end their use through a consensus-based forum like the COP process. We need to come to terms with the fact that the fossil fuel industry will fight to the end to defend its profits. The combination of political capture, deception and disinformation give them formidable influence. They will keep using their considerable wealth and power to game the system. As explained by Ripple et al, “The accelerating climate crisis is now a major driver of global instability.” Our climate predicament is already bad, but if we fail to change the status quo, it will get far worse. Emissions are now 10 percent higher than they were a decade ago, and the primary reason for that is the ongoing extraction and burning of fossil fuels. If we want to avert the end of civilization, we must phase out fossil fuels. We do this not only for ourselves but for future generations. We are fighting on behalf of all life on Earth. In this context, inviting the fossil fuel industry to participate in climate talks can be compared to allowing serial murderers to adjudicate their own crimes. It is patently insane to stage a climate conference that prevents us from dealing with the primary cause of the crisis. Common sense dictates that fossil fuels should be excluded from climate talks. COP30 is dead, long live COP The climate conference in Belém was doomed by denial, division, nationalism, distrust and war, but the fight to combat climate change is not over. We may not be winning the climate war, but at least we are still fighting. Multilateralism may be on the ropes, but it is far from dead. Highlights in the Global Mutirão include the tripling of funding for climate adaptation finance, trade that factors climate considerations (IFCCT), and the just transition mechanism (JTM). There was also the recognition, at least in theory, of Indigenous people’s land rights and knowledge as a fundamental climate solution. However, these modest successes were overshadowed by some glaring omissions, like clearing Amazonian land for cattle grazing. By far the most conspicuous silence pertains to the failure of COP30 to address the need to phase out fossil fuels. It is easy to succumb to despair. As one of the negotiators stated, “Sometimes I feel that this process has lost its humanity.” The urgency of our situation does not leave us much room to wallow in misery. As the UN Secretary General said, “the path to a liveable future gets steeper by the day, but this is no reason to surrender.” Every ton of GHG we can keep out of the atmosphere makes the world safer for future generations, and as stated in the Ripple et al report: “Avoiding every fraction of a degree of warming is critically important.” As stated in the COP30 final draft agreement: “The global transition towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible and the trend of the future.” The question is whether we can get there before we run out of time. While Trump has not succeeded in killing the COP process, he has slowed down progress at a time when we need to accelerate our efforts. The longer we wait to act, the more ambitious we will need to be and the greater the risk that we will trigger tipping points from which we may not be able to recover. Multilateral cooperation may not be dead, but it is limping along at a snail’s pace. Even if market forces keep moving us towards clean energy, we are not changing fast enough to curtail climate change. The large-scale deployment of renewables is expected to cut emissions in half by 2050, but that is not enough. Energy demand is growing faster than the supply, so even with the anticipated growth of new clean power capacity, we are still on track to exceed the upper threshold temperature limits. There is no getting away from the fact that we are not doing enough to stave off catastrophe, and we are rapidly running out of time to change our trajectory. Given the rapidly closing window to act, delegates are quite right to be demanding more from the COP process. A new approach is needed, one that comes to terms with the unconscionable evil of an industry that prioritizes profits over the welfare of life on the planet. There was an image in Belém that captured the moment with heartbreaking clarity: an Indigenous mother placing her baby into the arms of the COP president. It was a stark reminder of our tremendous responsibility. What we do — or don’t do — will decide the future for this child and the millions yet to be born. Leave a comment   Like Comment Restack   © 2025 Richard Matthews Unsubscribe