Ten years after 195 countries signed the landmark Paris Agreement, the planet is still overheating and the descent into a more dangerous climate continues. 

World leaders and an army of negotiators flocked to Brazil’s rainforest city of Belém for the annual UN climate summit, called COP30. Over the next two weeks, countries will negotiate the terms of the energy transition, including financial support for the Global South, the role of renewables, investing in adaptation, how Indigenous rights factor in and how to manage lucrative carbon offset trading schemes. 

UN Secretary General António Guterres recently said the Paris Agreement’s goal to hold global warming to 1.5C will inevitably fail. The caveat is still true that with radical global action, temperatures could be wrestled back down to safer levels. But what’s more likely is that the planet will cross dangerous tipping points that could see runaway climate breakdown unleashed as permafrost melts and releases billions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, sea levels precipitously rise as ice sheets melt and rapid changes contribute to a logging-driven “dieback” of the Amazon. The most vulnerable will be the worst hit. This is as true for individuals as it is for countries.

So with COP30 underway, climate diplomacy skeptics are asking an entirely fair question: what good is supposedly coming out of these high-level summits, where political leaders and a growing (and obscene) number of fossil fuel lobbyists gather to negotiate plans that never seem to translate into real-world action?

It’s a good question, and while there is plenty of evidence to say it’s not working well enough, I want to make the case for........

© National Observer