COP30 — Why It Won’t Save the Planet

Many hoped that holding the U.N. climate meeting in a rainforest nation could swing talks back to working on climate. Were those hopes premature? Photo: IAEA/Dean Calma via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Backgrounder: COP30 — Why It Won’t Save the Planet

Analysis by Joseph A. Davis

The United Nations’ climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil, starting Nov. 10, will not save the planet. It’s worth understanding why.

This will be the 30th "Conference of the Parties” to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, originally subscribed to by most of the world’s nations in 1972. It’s also called COP30, for short.

The other 29 didn’t save the planet, either. Although sometimes we thought they might and hoped they could.

Right now, however, the world seems well on the way to exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius warming set as a hopeful target in the much-ballyhooed Paris Agreement reached in 2015 (at COP 21).

The concentration of key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been growing steadily since then. At this writing, the atmospheric concentration of the main one, carbon dioxide, was about 425 ppm — compared to a nominal preindustrial level of 280 ppm.

Why? The biggest cause of industrial CO2 emissions has been the burning of fossil fuels: mostly coal, petroleum and “natural” (fossil) gas, or methane. Methane emissions themselves also cause global warming, although they also come from processes other than burning.

 

The nations of the world seem to have

lost sight of the simple fact that the

main way to control greenhouse gas

emissions is to stop burning fossil fuels.

 

It doesn’t take a science degree to know that the main way to control greenhouse gas emissions is to stop burning fossil fuels. Yet the nations of the world seem to have lost sight of that simple fact.

Some nations, such as petrostates, don’t care or don’t want other nations to care. Their immediate benefit has displaced everyone else’s long-term well-being.

Global emissions of CO2 have been climbing throughout this century (with a short break during the pandemic) — according to the International Energy Agency (which President Donald Trump wants to pull the United States out of).

 

Hard to cover? You bet!

Why is COP30 (or any COP, really) hard to cover? We have a list.

First, you probably can’t afford to go (which is one reason why so many organizations want to subsidize attendance). Hotel rooms (may require subscription) are scarce and very expensive in Belém. They are talking about housing people on cruise ships. Less-developed nations are complaining they can’t afford to go.

Second, the jargon, which can be harder to learn than a foreign language. Words like ambition, mitigation and adaptation have special meanings. A big one is nationally determined contributions — which is how much a nation is willing to decrease its emissions. Loss and damage means rich nations paying poor nations.

Third, the brackets. There will be one major text proposed for all nations to agree to. It contains brackets where things are not agreed to. The final text may be days late and watered down.

Fourth, the sideshows. There are numerous subnegotiations on things like finance and forests. All the industry and environmental groups will have their own events. The sideshows can be newsier than the main event.

Fifth, the spin. Diplomats will claim that the final text is a historic breakthrough. But it really isn’t.

 

Is the COP system broken?

Yes. Yes, it is. The last several COP meetings left little doubt. The last three were held in the Middle East or petrostates (Egypt, Dubai, Azerbaijan). That meant petrostates could largely prevent forward progress.

And they did. COP29 ended with no new numerical commitments to lowering carbon emissions.

 

The emphasis on how much

rich nations would promise to pay

poor nations may do little to lower

emissions or slow climate heating.

 

Instead, the emphasis was more on how much rich nations would promise to pay poorer nations. This was not so much about funding their efforts to reduce emissions as it was about reparations for the “loss and damage” industrial nations have caused poor ones.

For many poor nations, this seems to be the main point of the climate talks. But it may do little to lower emissions or slow climate heating.

It turns out that generalized pledges are more of a thing than bankable cash. There are a lot of climate funds (track them here). The biggest include the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund. The problem of who pays what to whom is still being worked out.

Having 194 nations all agree on anything is a big ambition. (If it happens, we will let you know.) Once you have split all the differences, there is little left for an agreement.

Some nations bitterly criticized the COP29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, for gaveling the meeting to a close before all nations had really agreed (may require subscription). That later proved untrue. The Alliance of Small Island States, a group of the 39 states most vulnerable to sea level rise, had walked out at the last minute.

By the end of COP29, serious voices were wondering whether the annual meeting format was capable of doing the job.

 

Will Brazil be better?

For much of the past year, many hoped that meeting in a rainforest nation, even one that was a major oil producer, could swing the climate talks back to actually working on climate. Those hopes have been premature.

The COP30 president, Ambassador André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, issued an urgent call Aug. 19 for nations to turn in their greenhouse gas emission targets for 2035 in time for the meeting. Few have done so as of this writing. They were due in February.

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev was criticized by some nations for closing the meeting before final agreement. Photo: U.N. Climate Change/Kiara Worth via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

But what Brazil does have is rainforest — which in a normal time is supposed to sequester carbon by growing wood. Forested nations have been able to claim “offsets,” or tradable credits against their carbon emissions, merely by not cutting down their forests. Brazil and other forested nations are likely to seek this advantage at COP30.

But offsets may be an illusion. Lisa Song at ProPublica and others have documented ways in which claimed offsets fail to produce real emission reductions. Is a rainforest still protecting us against global heating if it is burning? Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is steadily being cleared — often illegally — for ranching, farming, mining and other extractive industries.

The good news is that Brazilian Amazon deforestation is not as bad as it once was. But the bad news is that in recent years, the rainforest seems to be undergoing profound systemic changes.

There has been a severe drought for the last several years, drying up the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The cause, scientists say, is climate change. One result has been more wildfires.

Time Magazine recently blared, “The Amazon Rain Forest Is Nearly Gone.” A more measured account (may require subscription) in The New York Times suggests this could take decades.

Although COP30 in Brazil may refocus the climate talks on forests, it may not be enough to change the planet’s course.

 

Is it all about money?

Yes, richer nations may more easily be able to afford attending COP30. Yet we can be pretty sure that “finance” for poorer ones is the issue that will dominate the meeting. If only because that’s the issue that has dominated recent meetings.

Let’s put that in another perspective. COPs are in some sense a majority-rule situation. The number of nations harmed by climate heating (the island and developing nations) is greater than the nations that have historically emitted the most (the United States, China, Europe and the petrostates). That’s another reason money will be a focus.

The agenda set out by Brazil is broader than this — including not only forests, but agriculture, resiliency and adaptation.

One indicator possibly prognosticating events to come at COP30 is a pre-meeting meeting held June 16-26 in Bonn, Germany. It raised more issues than it settled, but it was a beginning. Yes, they agreed that nations should reduce their emissions. No, they did not really agree on finance.

But the Bonn meeting may have given another clue, according to The Guardian: It was “held up for two days because countries could not agree on the agenda for the meeting.”

[Editor’s Note: For more on covering climate change, visit our Topic on the Beat, which includes a library of related SEJournal stories, plus climate change headlines from EJToday. Also see our Climate Change Resource Guide and special reports on Covering Climate Solutions, Covering Your Climate: The South and Covering Your Climate: The Emerald Corridor.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 32. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.