COP 30:
Fixing the Climate Stays on the Back Burner

December 8, 2025

This article is translated and excerpted from the November 28 issue, #2991 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

Brazil hosted the global conference organized by the United Nations, COP 30, in the city of Belém. After running over schedule, the conference produced a load of empty phrases and promises that don’t commit anyone to do anything.

No roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels was proposed. Only a “voluntary initiative” was suggested for countries promising to reduce their carbon pollution. The final text, entitled “Mutirao,” meaning “collective effort,” calls for “efforts to at least triple” the financial aid poor countries need to adapt to climate change by building roads and more storm-resistant buildings, modifying their agriculture, and so on. But these “tripled efforts” were already budgeted. No concrete procedures were defined for implementing them.

The governments of oil, gas, and coal-producing countries tolerate no constraints. Governments of developed countries do not want to pay a dime. As the richest, the U.S. did not even participate in the conference and had slashed its aid long ago—humanitarian and otherwise.

…

As for the indigenous and other peoples of the Amazon, while the conference brought them before the cameras, they gained nothing in terms of recognition of their rights. And neither did peoples living in territories ravaged by typhoons or drought. This neglect is to be expected in a world where the rights of the poor do not exist.

“We are going in the right direction, but at the wrong pace,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said. This statement can hardly fill the void left at the close of this conference.