The 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC, just ended. Stakeholders are out in the media trying spin the outcome as a win. Simon Stiell, climate change executive secretary for the UN is, for instance, praising Cop30 for showing that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet”. But let us be clear. The conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, a form of climate denial.

In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) determined that the world had already developed, or planned to develop, too much fossil fuel to be able to halt global heating at 2C. It acknowledged that the capital assets built up around fossil fuels must be stranded – that is to say, abandoned and not used – if warming was to be limited to 2C. But the Cop30 decision text ignores all this. Indeed, it never even mentions fossil fuels.

This failure is all the more bitter because Cop30 had initially sent out so many hopeful signals that it would finally tackle the “transitioning away from fossil fuels” pledge from Cop28. Speaking ahead of the conference, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that the world needs “roadmaps that will enable humankind, in a fair and planned manner, to overcome its dependence on fossil fuels”.

Lula’s call was backed by about

© The Guardian