The latest round of COP talks, which concluded last week, have ended just as we might have predicted. The final agreement contains no direct mention of fossil fuels whatsoever, and is a vague and purely voluntary commitment to ‘begin discussion’ on a roadmap to eventually phase out their use. More than ever, COP is no ‘forum for discussion’, but a focal point for the anger of the masses at the callous ineptitude of the ruling class. Worse, this charade has become an annual insult.
Hosted in Brazil’s sweltering Amazonian port city of Belém, COP30 was a festival of discord and disaster, perhaps more so than any other COP in the 30-year history of the UN’s annual greenwashing conference. As the world burns, so too did COP itself, as a fire broke out at the East Africa pavilion on the second-last day.
As capitalism continues to pose a greater threat to the climate with every passing day, COP30, like its predecessors, was conclusive proof that the ruling class is unfit to rule and unwilling to solve the most urgent problems facing the world today.
This was evident even to those who participated. Delegates from Panama rightly described the discussions as a “clown show”, with the country’s lead negotiator adding:
“A climate decision that cannot even say fossil fuels is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence.”
At least 29 participating countries sent a letter to the COP presidency condemning the final agreement, in protest against its lack of meaningful content. 24 countries supported a rival declaration on Friday, spearheaded by Colombia and the Netherlands, announcing a separate conference in 2026 to discuss the phasing out of fossil fuels.
Aleksandar Rankovic, director of The Common Initiative think tank, summed up the anxiety among many of the participants, who know they are participants in a fraud committed against the whole world:
“The way the Belém talks closed were like the entire summit: opaque, procedurally questionable, substantially empty, but dressed up as the pinnacle of multilateralism.”
The biggest snub, however, came from the US, who boycotted the event entirely. Trump has taken a hard line against COP throughout his two presidencies, having twice withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement. He also declared to the UN in September that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.
The decision by the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases to ignore COP30, only further highlights the charade of this conference. This comes only one month after US officials were accused of “bullying” and “intimidating” weaker countries into opposing a new carbon tax on freight shipping at a meeting of the International Maritime Organisation in London.
In an epoch of imperialist rivalry, global cooperation has become even more of a utopia than it ever was for the capitalists. Trump’s policy is “Drill, baby, drill!” In its struggle against rising rivals, the American capitalist class is prepared to ride roughshod over the future of our species. Undoubtedly, some may well be tempted to follow Trump’s lead and ditch environmental targets altogether.
Impotence and anger
The events at COP30 will come as no surprise to those who have followed previous years. Fossil fuel-producing countries water down the final agreement; richer powers find an excuse not to give more money for helping poorer countries adapt to climate change; and at the end of the day, most countries will just ignore their commitments anyway. All the while the crisis deepens and frustration builds.
After 12 hours of last-ditch negotiations on the final day, this year’s ‘Belém political package’ delivered about as little as anyone could expect. In the generous words of The Guardian, the finalised agreement is “a faltering, inadequate step, and one that will barely interrupt the climate’s steady march towards catastrophe”.
In the 30 years of COP resolutions, the desperate need to transition away from fossil fuels has been mentioned only once, at COP28. COP30’s utterly meaningless ‘roadmap to a roadmap’ to phasing out fossil fuels (which, as stated, does not even mention fossil fuels) brings this absurdity to new heights.
Other ‘highlights’ include the fact that – despite being held on the edge of the Amazon – proposals for concrete plans to halt deforestation were omitted from the final agreement, key decisions on cuts to greenhouse gas emissions were postponed until next year, and the proposed monetary aid for poorer countries to adapt to the climate crisis was delayed until 2035.
After three decades of at best empty promises, the working class, poor and indigenous communities who bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change are sick and tired of the cynical platitudes that fill COP’s annual resolutions.
While the elites represented in the hall tried to congratulate themselves on their ‘progress’, the unprecedented deployment of armed police and even soldiers in an iron ring around the entrances told a different story. They are also quite aware that outside the hall, an enormous rage is brewing. Every day, the rumbling sound of that anger could be heard, as tens of thousands came out to protest on every day of the 11-day conference.
On the first week of the event, that sound breached the iron ring around COP. A group of protestors – some in traditional indigenous dress – stormed the event hall with signs reading “our forests are not for sale”. While COP30 was presented to the public as ‘the indigenous peoples’ COP’, the event came at the same time as the Brazilian government is considering overturning a 20-year-old ban on the expansion of soya farming deeper into the Amazon.
Decades of impotence on the part of a ruling class unable to square the needs of the climate with their overriding need to make profit have come home to roost. Workers, youth and the oppressed around the world no longer look to COP with any enthusiasm, if they ever did. In the eyes of a growing layer, COP30 has become an annual mockery. It itself represents the existential threat that the system and its representatives pose to us all.
Tipping points
Unlike the rich and powerful of the world, who are free to wax lyrical about the climate crisis from the comfort of their air-conditioned boardrooms, millions of poor and working-class people around the world have their lives and livelihoods threatened by climate change at this very moment.
Last month, a report from 160 scientists and researchers found that the globe has now hit its first ‘catastrophic tipping point’, with the long-term decline and severe degradation of all major warm water coral reefs now likely unavoidable.
The climate is also dangerously close to a number of other ‘tipping points’ if temperatures continue to rise. The dieback of the Amazon, the loss of the ice sheets, and the changing of major ocean currents are firmly on the agenda, unless dramatic changes are made – dramatic changes which COP has made clear are not forthcoming from the capitalists.
With every passing day, the poor and exploited masses of the world are approaching their own tipping point. The bankers, bosses and politicians who spend their time muddling over the insignificant nuances of COP agreements while the world burns, are at the same time pushing austerity and militarism in their own countries.
The UN, COP or any other capitalist institution will fail to solve the climate crisis just as such institutions have failed to solve the social and economic crises around the world. The charade of COP30 has once again graphically demonstrated that the ruling class cannot be trusted with the future of humanity. The working class must take matters into its own hands.
