Raphael Machado
By overestimating the importance of this specific event, Brazil may not only waste valuable political capital but also contribute to the growing fatigue and skepticism surrounding international climate negotiations.
This week began in Belém, one of the most important cities in the Brazilian Amazon, the thirtieth edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), the most important international forum dedicated to the debate and militant articulation in favor of the Green Agenda and the climate cause. The symbolism attempted for the event, held at the "gateway" to the Amazon, is evident. COP30 is being promoted by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva not only as the most crucial event of the year but as the most significant climate conference in history and the unavoidable "moment of truth" for humanity.
The tone of Lula's inaugural speech was, so to speak, alarmist, bordering on the apocalyptic. He painted a grim picture of imminent catastrophes - devastating droughts, coastal flooding, mass migrations, and biodiversity collapse, even citing a recent tornado in southern Brazil - unless drastic and immediate actions are taken.
However, when we speak of "drastic and immediate actions," the first difficulty today is the widespread perception that the climate agenda will widen inequalities, rather than reduce them. This is because when experts talk about increasing taxes on personal automobiles, making the consumption of animal meat more difficult, and making fossil fuels scarce until they are completely replaced, we are obviously facing a scenario in which the working class will no longer have cars, will no longer eat meat, will no longer travel, and will pay more for everything. Meanwhile, the ruling class will continue to have enough money to own fleets of cars, gorge themselves on prime steak, travel the world by private jet, and continue consuming as usual - merely paying more for it.
It is not without irony, by the way, to see the hundreds of immensely polluting private planes and jets heading to a climate conference, so their occupants can demand the end of automobiles. A single private jet pollutes, in one year, the equivalent of 200 cars.
In any case, contrary to what Lula implies, it does not seem that we are facing any watershed moment. And if this, in fact, is confirmed, we will have to conclude that the President of Brazil has made the wrong bets for the year 2025.
The problem begins with the Lula government's strategic decision to modify the calendar of the BRICS Summit to prioritize COP30. The BRICS bloc represents the epicenter of the transition to a multipolar world order. Traditionally held at the end of the year, the 2025 summit, under Brazil's presidency, was abruptly moved up to the middle of the year. In practice, this hastened the diplomatic agenda and made it virtually impossible to follow up and consolidate the significant advances achieved at the 2024 Kazan Summit in Russia, which dealt with crucial issues such as creating financial mechanisms independent of the dollar and political coordination in regional conflicts.
This calendar repositioning is not a mere logistical detail. It reveals, with crystal clarity, the hierarchy of priorities of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty): the Green Agenda was explicitly placed above the Multipolar Agenda. While the latter seeks to restructure global power relations, redistributing influence away from the traditional G7 axis and American unipolarity, the former is seen by Lula as a stage with greater prestige and international legitimacy, precisely because it allows him to strengthen ties with the "democratic" countries of the "International Community", rather than with the "autocracies," which are increasingly viewed with suspicion by Lula.
However, this bet could backfire. By subordinating a forum that brings together some of the world's fastest-growing economies-many of them dependent on fossil fuels - to an event whose core is decarbonization, Lula may inadvertently be weakening the very platform that grants Brazil a leadership role in the emerging bloc.
The thesis that Lula is overestimating the importance of COP30 gains even sharper contours when observing the drastic change in the scenario of the main sponsors of the Green Agenda. Over the last decade, the locomotive of climate ambitions was pulled at full steam by the United States and the European Union. However, that engine now faces serious fuel problems.
In the United States, the election of Donald Trump in November 2024 represented an earthquake in global climate policy. Fulfilling his campaign promises, Trump not only resumed the path of energy independence at any cost but also aggressively dismantled the "green" legacy of his predecessor. Funding for government renewable energy and climate adaptation programs was severely cut; new licenses for oil and gas drilling - including through the controversial fracking method - were issued on a massive scale; and the flow of USAID resources to environmental NGOs abroad was practically extinguished. The absence of any high-level official U.S. representative in Belém is not a boycott, but the clear manifestation of a new state policy: the climate agenda has ceased to be a national security priority for Washington and is, today, solemnly ignored.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the green impetus is colliding with a harsh geopolitical and economic reality. The sanctions imposed on Russia, in retaliation for the conflict in Ukraine, triggered a domino effect on the continent. The loss of access to cheap Russian natural gas, aggravated by the terrorist attack that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, plunged the bloc into a prolonged energy crisis. Lacking immediate alternatives, countries like Germany were forced to reactivate coal-fired power plants, the most polluting fossil fuel. Simultaneously, popular pressure from rural producers - who, from Dutch tractors to Polish trucks, have been blocking capitals in protest against environmental regulations deemed suffocating - has forced governments to soften their decarbonization targets. The "European Green Deal" still exists on paper, but its implementation has been marked by pragmatism and concessions, diluting its transformative character.
Throughout this year, the European Union has paralyzed the anti-deforestation law under discussion until next year, granted car manufacturers an additional two years to comply with pollution regulations, and all this comes on the heels of the postponement of 2030 targets to 2050.
The first and most visible consequence of these global transformations is the undeniable political emptying of COP30. The list of heads of state and government present in Belém is remarkably short compared to previous editions. Previously, we had already noted that COP29 itself was emptier than COP28, which in itself indicates a downward trend in international adherence to the Green Agenda.
The U.S., as mentioned, is entirely absent. Key emerging powers, such as China and India, have sent mere vice-ministers or ambassadors, signaling low-level engagement. Most of the Global South countries, in turn, either followed the same path or simply sent no one of prominence.
This phenomenon is an eloquent thermometer of global priorities. In an era of accelerated geopolitical transition, with the multiplication of regional conflicts (Ukraine, Sahel, Taiwan, Palestine) and the strengthening of competing power axes, the climate agenda is, in practice, being relegated to the background. For nations whose sovereignty and economic development are under pressure, it is a strategic risk to sacrifice state power and industrial capacity for the sake of an abstract defense of the "environment" especially when the historical largest emitters seem to be retreating from their own promises.
Finally, the persistent blindness of COP30 regarding a tool that many experts consider indispensable for a realistic energy transition is striking: nuclear power. Fission energy, when used for civil and peaceful purposes, is the only known source that provides baseload power (i.e., constant and reliable, independent of sun or wind) with practically zero greenhouse gas emissions. Countries like France, Sweden, and, more recently, the United Arab Emirates, demonstrate its efficacy.
Russia's ROSATOM has been contributing to the energy transition by forming partnerships with various countries aiming to build nuclear power plants in Africa, Western Asia, and Latin America.
New technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), promise to make nuclear power safer, more affordable, and versatile. However, within the ideological ecosystem that dominates the COPs, nuclear power remains an untouchable taboo, often equated with fossil fuels, while intermittent solutions not yet fully capable of sustaining an industrial electrical grid receive all the focus and investment.
COP30 in Belém is born, therefore, under a cloud of paradoxes. It is an event of high rhetoric but meager political participation; a stage where the "moment of truth" is announced, but where the main actors of the climate drama are absent or have reduced roles; a forum that clamors for radical solutions but voluntarily ignores one of the most powerful technological tools at our disposal.
The risk is that, by overestimating the importance of this specific event, Brazil will not only waste valuable political capital but also contribute to the growing fatigue and skepticism surrounding international climate negotiations.