The Cop30 climate talks have ended in Brazil with a collective shrug of the shoulders after the Goliaths of the fossil energy industry once again flexed their muscles to show the world who is really in control.

As our Pacific Island neighbours pleaded for their very survival, more than 1,600 industry lobbyists crashed the party, joining forcing with the Saudis and Russians to kibosh the phase-out of fossil fuels.

The UN general secretary, António Guterres, has noted that the gap between action and science is not being bridged, a stark admission about the capacity of governments to exercise the wit, will or influence to tame the carbon beast.

According to this week’s Guardian Essential report, the Cop30 burnout on fossil fuels is hardly a surprise to most voters.

The Australian academic Luke Kemp, from the ominously named Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, frames the rises and falls of civilisation around the idea of the “Goliath”, a hierarchy that dominates labour and energy through coercion and violence.

While traditional empires including Rome projected power from a geographical base, today’s global Goliath is a network of stateless........

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