Another COP, another cop-out!

As anyone who pays the slightest attention to the news must know by now, COP30, the annual global climate change jamboree — this year in Belem, Brazil — ended, yet again, more with a whimper than a bang.

The fact that the words “fossil fuel” did not even appear in the final statement exemplifies that failure.

In an interview with The Guardian before COP30, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had said “we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5 C in the next few years.”

Said Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, after the final plenary: “I’m not saying we’re winning the climate fight,” while Mr. Guterres stated: “The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide.”

COP30 was particularly embarrassing for Prime Minister Mark Carney and for Canada.

Carney had once been the darling of the climate-action community, as the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

But the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which he co-founded in 2021 and co-led, and which was supposed to........

© Times Colonist