The Big Fail: Cop30 Was An Exercise in Kicking the Can Down the Road, the Can Being An Admission the Whole Thing Has Been A Scam
DAVID WOJICK
Guest Post from David Wojick via CFact.
This was mostly a quiet COP, and with good reason. None of the big issues that normally create the drama were on the initial agenda. This omission of the most contentious issues was conspicuously deliberate. But in the end, things got out of hand, and nobody knows where they are going.
The glaring initial omission was likely a Trump effect, because the biggest issue by far is funding from America and other so-called developed countries to the equally so-called developing countries. With the leading donor, America, not at the table, there was little to discuss.
It all began when the agenda was established quickly and with little of the usual debate. COP President Lago of Brazil simply did not put the big issues on the list. Instead, he set discussion groups to be held until the first Wednesday in the two-week COP term.
Wednesday came, and nothing had changed, so the issues were again put off until Sunday when the COP was well on its way. There was still no progress, so these issues were finally posted for formal discussion on the second Wednesday, with just two days left to go.
The predictable result was a meaningless mishmash of futuristic statements. Mind you, this makes sense since there was never anything of substance to decide. That is why few heads of state showed up.
But something big happened along the way. The buzzword that emerged was Roadmap. In each hard case, there was going to be a roadmap for getting someplace, someday, which was often unspecified. But there were no roads, so no map. An issue resolution roadmap normally specifies methods and milestones. In this case, the only method was ever more meetings.
The big issues were huge dollar finance from America and other developed countries, trade measures, boosting emission-cutting ambition, transitioning away from fossil fuels and adaptation.
Trade measures is a relatively new issue. It has to do with the EU and some other countries implementing punitive trade barriers based on the emissions from making stuff. Of course coal coal-burning countries are against this, led by China.
Transitioning away from fossil fuels was especially interesting because it emerged from a group of countries amid great resistance. In particular, the African group initially insisted that in the near term, fossil fuel development was essential to their economic development. This was a refreshing piece of reality that many countries came to share.
As the clock ran down, transitioning away from fossil fuels became the really big issue. On one side, the radicals wanted a roadmap specifying a global end to fossil fuel use by a date certain. The other side simply wanted no such thing.
Roughly half of the almost 200 countries present were on each side. But the UN rules say agreement must be unanimous, so half was pretty small.
The nutty EU and UK actually led the radicals, insisting until just before the end that the final agreement would have to include this transition. Happily, it did not. In fact, fossil fuels were not mentioned, a victory for reality.
Then it gets really interesting, possibly critically. A commitment to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels was not part of the COP 30 deal, but Brazil promised an initiative outside the UN process, building on a plan backed by Colombia and about 90 other nations.
This is a wild precedent to say the least. How does this new process work? Is it competing with the UN COP process established in 1992 with a Treaty all attending countries have ratified? Will the new process decisions have any such legal basis? It could even grow to replace the UN COP process, which many countries have said is outdated. How it works is completely undefined.
In short, Brazil fumbled the COP process to the point that an undefined new process is underway. Stay tuned to CFACT as this comic tragedy plays out.
Dr. David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. He specializes in science and technology-intensive issues, especially in energy and the environment.
This article (The Big Fail: Cop30 Was An Exercise in Kicking the Can Down the Road, the Can Being An Admission the Whole Thing Has Been A Scam) was created and published by Energy Security and Freedom and is republished here under “Fair Use”
See Related Article Below
The Failure of COP30 Is Our Success, As the Grifters, Ideologues, and Power Seekers Are Dealt A Dose of Reality
Robert Bradley dissects the Sunnova debacle.
ROBERT BRADLEY
Guest Post by Robert Bradley, Jr. at Master Resource.
Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, self-described “He/Him; TIME100 Climate 2025; Special Representative for Climate Change of Panamá; Inaugural Obama Scholar; Pritzker Environmental Genius Award Finalist 2023,” summarized COP30 as follows.
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Dear friends, colleagues, and every person who cares about life on this planet,
I will be brutally honest: the COP and the UN system are not working for you. They have never really worked for you. And today, they are failing you at a historic scale.
Ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the negotiators that your governments sent to COP30 are not defending your future. They are defending the very industries that created this crisis: the fossil fuel industry and the forces driving global deforestation.
After three weeks of advocating for language that reflects the reality you live (floods, droughts, heatwaves, hunger, displacement) the text countries are now poised to adopt does the opposite.
Let me be clear so there is no confusion: COP30 will close with a political text without mentioning fossil fuels phase-out. It does not mention fossil fuel phase-down. It does not provide a pathway to end deforestation. It does not mention the very causes of the crisis. Nothing. Zero. Silence.
A Forest COP with no commitment on forests is a very bad joke. A climate decision that cannot even say “fossil fuels” is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence.
Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters. Meanwhile, children in elementary school are learning more accurate climate science than the text chosen to guide global climate policy. This is a tragedy.
This message is not to governments. It is to you: communities, youth, farmers, pastors, teachers, CEOs, artists, Indigenous leaders, scientists, parents, organizers, workers.
Rise. Speak. Organize. Vote. Demand. Mobilize. If your representatives refuse to represent you, then replace them. If your leaders refuse to defend your right to a livable future, then become the leaders your country needs.
We must keep fossil fuels in the ground, the COP30 outcome will not do that. We must end deforestation everywhere, the current text does not take us there. We must triple adaptation finance: the current text encourages, but does not commit to verifiable action.
Despite all of this, I still believe in hope. Not passive hope: active, defiant hope.
Hope as a decision. Hope as courage. Hope as action. Everyone outside the Blue Zones of the multilateral maze: we need you now more than ever.If there is to be a turning point, it will not come from a COP. It will come from people. It will come from you refusing to accept mediocrity dressed as diplomacy.
Rise up. Speak up. Stand together. We still have time, but not if we stay silent. When leaders fail, people lead. And it is time to lead.
This verdict needs to be turned around. What is presented as bad news is really good news. His is a false hope that the world is not, in fact, demanding better energies in place of inferior ones; that dense stock energies replace dilute, intermittent, fragile, land-and-transmission-intensive ones.
This is real social justice in place of the green greed of the Climate Industrial Complex. And global greening from CO2 fertilization is a byproduct of fossil-fuel usage to boot!
This article (The Failure of COP30 Is Our Success, As the Grifters, Ideologues, and Power Seekers Are Dealt A Dose of Reality) was created and published by Energy Security and Freedom and is republished here under “Fair Use”
Featured image: onebillionresilient.org
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