COP out
TetleysTLDR: the summary
COP30 wasn’t a climate summit, it was a networking event for polluters. More fossil-fuel lobbyists attended than representatives from the countries already drowning, burning, and starving because of climate collapse. Leaders flew in on private jets to deliver empty speeches about 'ambition' while quietly ensuring nothing binding, nothing radical, and nothing that might threaten corporate profits made it into the final text.
The summit’s big idea? More net-zero waffle, more carbon-offset scams, and a shiny new 'nature credit' market that basically privatises the planet so corporations can keep pumping out emissions. Rich nations refused to pay their climate debts, scolded the Global South, and left with nothing but photo ops and air miles.
COP30 proved what we already knew: capitalism cannot solve the crisis it created, and the people inside the conference hall will never save us. The real fight is outside, and it’s ours.
TetleysTLDR: the long bit
If you ever wanted a perfect example of late-stage capitalist pageantry: a glossy, jet-fuelled ritual where world leaders cosplay as saviours while the planet cooks behind them, you need look no further than COP30. Another year, another round of moral grandstanding, another sprawling, air-conditioned pavilion where the Global North lectures everyone else on the urgent need to stop doing the very things it continues doing in bulk. You’d think, after nearly three decades of these jamborees, the penny might have dropped, you can’t negotiate with physics, you can’t carbon-offset your way out of ecological collapse, and you can’t keep pretending that a room full of politicians, oil executives, bankers, and paid PR eco-frauds is going to halt planetary annihilation.
COP30 managed to prove something though, that the world’s leaders have perfected the art of looking busy while doing sod all. Held in the sweltering symbolism of a Brazil torn between environmental stewardship and the relentless pressure of global extractive capitalism, COP30 had all the ingredients of a turning point. New pledges! Historic urgency! Youth activists! Tribal leaders! Apocalyptic climate data! A world literally burning! Something, surely, would give.
And something did give: the patience of anyone who still harboured even the faintest hope that a process built by the fossil-fuelled rich to preserve the interests of the fossil-fuelled rich might fix a crisis created by the fossil-fuelled rich. Because COP30 was not a climate summit. It was a first class airport transit lounge with speeches.
A conference built on contradictions
To understand the farce of COP30, you need to grasp the contradictions built into the summit itself. These gatherings are supposed to be where the world finally musters the courage to take action proportionate to the crisis. But the people who attend them: presidents, prime ministers, billionaire philanthropists, executives from oil companies with more skeletons than emissions reductions aren’t there to act. They’re there to perform.
Nothing demonstrated this better than the fact that the number of delegates representing fossil fuel interests at COP30 outnumbered those from the ten most climate-vulnerable nations.
Picture that: the countries being swallowed by rising seas and battered by storms turn up with a handful of negotiators and a powerpoint presentation. Meanwhile, Shell, BP, Aramco, ExxonMobil and their assorted court jesters arrive with more staff than an invading army. When your climate conference looks more like a trade show for the very corporations torching the planet, the outcome isn’t going to be salvation. It’s going to be a brochure. And that’s exactly what COP30 produced: glossy promises, airy declarations, and absolutely no binding commitments that would threaten the profits of the carbon barons running the show.
The grand declaration of nowt
Oh, the declarations. The solemn statements of intent that read like they were penned by ChatGPT on a hangover. Ambitions! Pathways! Transformations! ‘Phasing out’, ‘phasing down’, ‘transitioning away’, ‘moving towards’, ‘exploring mechanisms’, ‘considering frameworks’. Every verb chosen carefully to sound vaguely hopeful while guaranteeing no disruption to business as usual.
The headline commitment from COP30, the thing they trumpeted as if Moses had handed it down on a tablet, was yet another non-binding promise to ‘accelerate progress’ towards the now unachievable 1.5°C pathway. Never mind that the pathway is already belching smoke behind us, that train has left the station, and the tracks are on fire. Never mind that scientists have repeated, year after year, report after report, that only immediate, radical, legally enforceable cuts in emissions can avert catastrophe. No, COP30 gave us the diplomatic equivalent of a shrug and a smile: We’ll try harder next time.
It was climate change as self-help mantra. Visualise the emissions reductions and maybe they’ll manifest. Meanwhile, fossil fuel production is expanding, oil licensing rounds are proliferating from the North Sea to the Amazon basin, and global emissions keep climbing. To call COP30’s outcomes inadequate is generous. They were cowardly.
Belem - A city built in what was virgin Amazon rain forest: the lungs of the planet.
Net zero: the great con trick
No modern climate summit is complete without the magic words: net zero. At COP30, they were uttered with almost religious reverence, as if they constitute a solution rather than a fig leaf. Net zero is the neoliberal dream of climate policy: a way to look serious about emissions cuts while continuing to pump carbon into the sky as long as you ‘offset’ it somewhere else. The entire premise of net zero is a confidence trick. It assumes future trees, future technologies, future carbon capture plants, future accounting wizardry will undo the damage happening right now, all so governments and corporations don’t have to make the one change that actually works: stop burning oil, gas, and coal. Net zero is the corporate equivalent of promising to start the diet on Monday while ordering another round of chips. And COP30 treated it like scripture.
In fact, the largest applause of the summit came not for indigenous communities defending the Amazon, nor for the scientists presenting the terrifying state of the climate, but for the announcement of a new 'nature credit market' effectively privatising the concept of forest management in order to allow corporations to continue their emissions binge. Because nothing says ‘protecting the Earth’ like turning it into a voucher scheme.
Green colonialism at its finest
One of the most nauseating spectacles of COP30 was the parade of Global North leaders scolding Global South nations about deforestation or rising emissions while their own countries remain among the world’s biggest historical polluters. The UK government, which has approved new oil and gas licences and built its energy policy around protecting private profit, arrived at COP30 wagging its finger at countries with a fraction of its resources. The EU’s delegation lectured the world on green transition while importing Brazilian meat, African minerals, and cheap Asian labour to maintain its comfortable lifestyle. Canada delivered passionate speeches about protecting nature while expanding tar sands operations. The United States, with its endless wars, sprawling military emissions and oil lobby-owned Congress, had the sheer front to talk about moral responsibility.
And then there was the funding, or rather, the lack of it. The so-called ‘loss and damage’ fund, meant to help countries already being devastated by climate breakdown, was topped up with contributions so small they would be an insult if they weren’t already a sick joke. The wealthy nations that caused the crisis refuse to pay anything close to what justice demands. It’s green colonialism in deluxe packaging: the rich keep burning; the poor keep drowning; the rich offer peanuts; the poor offer gratitude. It's Kafka meets climate.
World leaders and Fossil Fuel lobbyists who flew to a city carved out of the Amazon in fuel hungry Private Jets to discuss fossil fuel damage to the planet
The spectacle of hypocrisy
Climate activists were, as usual, corralled into 'designated protest zones' that in practice meant a few square metres of concrete far away from the conference entrance. Heaven forbid that the fossil lobby have to account for the responsibility of their actions. Not when there is all that French champagne, Argentinian steak and Cuban cigars to quaff through that were flown there specially. A summit that supposedly represents the collective future of humanity couldn’t bear to let the voices of actual humans disrupt its corporate networking sessions.
Inside, delegates moved between air-conditioned halls displaying the latest greenwashing innovations: hydrogen fantasies, carbon capture vapourware, AI-optimised emissions dashboards and an array of biofuel solutions that require more land than actually exists on the planet. You could almost hear the Earth screaming as you walked past the booths. And of course, the VIP jets were lined up on the runway like a car showroom for the apocalypse. Hundreds of private planes descending on a climate conference is now so routine that it barely raises an eyebrow. World leaders who could easily meet via encrypted video call instead choose to fly thousands of miles because nothing says ‘urgent climate action’ like burning enough jet fuel to heat a small town.
COP30 generated more air miles than action. More press releases than policies. More photo ops than progress.
Capitalism cannot save what it is designed to destroy
At the heart of COP30’s failure is something deeper than incompetence or hypocrisy. The summit failed for one simple reason: it operates within the logic of capitalism, and capitalism cannot solve a problem it is structurally designed to create.
Climate change is not an unfortunate by-product of human activity. It is the direct result of a system built on extraction, consumption, endless growth, and the commodification of everything from oil to oxygen. You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. You cannot maintain an economic order dependent on fossil fuels while claiming to transition away from them. You cannot protect profits and protect the planet. Yet every COP summit, including this one, clings to the fantasy that market-friendly mechanisms, corporate partnerships, carbon trading schemes, and private investment will magically deliver climate salvation. It’s the same delusional thinking that assumes arsonists should be entrusted with designing fire-safety standards. What we needed from COP30 was radicalism: a commitment to nationalise fossil fuel companies, phase out extraction immediately, invest massively in public green energy, and redistribute wealth from the polluters to the devastated. What we got instead was a roundtable sponsored by Shell, an offset market sponsored by Barclays, and a closing ceremony sponsored by hypocrisy.
The real movement isn’t in the conference hall
The people who will save the planet were not inside COP30. They weren’t wearing lanyards, they weren’t sipping catered espresso, and they weren’t giving keynote speeches.They were outside: indigenous communities fighting to defend forests with their bodies; young people marching for a future they’ll actually have to live in; workers demanding a just transition that gives them security instead of redundancy; climate refugees telling the truth about what it means to lose everything; campaigners refusing to let fossil fuel companies rewrite the narrative.The real climate movement isn’t the one with a seat at the table. It’s the one banging on the doors.
COP was never meant to work and it’s time to admit it
Maybe it’s time we stop pretending COP summits are going to save us. Maybe it’s time we acknowledge the obvious, these conferences were never designed to deliver revolutionary change. They were designed to manage public expectations, to buy time for governments unwilling to challenge corporate power, and to keep the fossil fuel industry wrapped in a blanket of legitimacy. Year after year, the world goes through the same ritual: panic, conference, declaration, stasis. And every year the emissions go up.mmThe failure of COP30 is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of a process captured by the very forces driving the crisis. And time is running out.
Air miles and ashes
COP30 didn’t stop climate change. It didn’t slow it. It didn’t even pretend convincingly. What it did produce, in abundance, were air miles, sound bites, networking opportunities, and excuses. It was in the most literal sense, a COP-out.
Unless we build a movement powerful enough to sideline the politicians, eject the corporations, and tear up the economic logic that created this mess, COP31 will be just as futile. As will COP32, COP33, COP40, COP50 until there’s nothing left to negotiate because the planet has already made its own decisions. If COP30 left us with anything, it’s the clarity that the people in charge are never going to save us. Which means we’ll have to save ourselves and we’d better get on with it, before the only thing left of future climate summits is the contrail.
Tetley is a left of centre writer and retired musician based in the UK. A former member of the Labour Party, he writes political analysis exposing Britain’s authoritarian drift, the criminalisation of protest, and the erosion of civil liberties.
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