Despite COP30 failures, officials vow to fight on

Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, speaks at COP30 as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva looks on. (Courtesy photo)

Preparing to host November’s COP30 climate summit, Brazil picked the Amazon river port of Belém as the venue, apparently hoping proximity to the world’s largest tropical rainforest would inspire delegates to make the UN-sponsored conference a success. As talks concluded on Nov. 22, one day past their official 12-day schedule, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did claim some positive results. In particular, he noted delegates ratified the key objective of the Paris Agreement produced a decade ago in COP21: to keep global temperatures from rising 2.0º Celsius higher—and preferably no more than 1.5ºC higher—than their pre-industrial levels. But Lula had to admit that delegates from the 194 countries represented at this year’s conference failed to make new, concrete commitments to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and transition away from fossil fuels. Nor, he acknowledged, did they act to make real the still largely aspirational... Read more →