At COP 30, Continued Irrelevance and Failure Is in the Air – RedState

The 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 30) is currently taking place in Belém, Brazil.

There is good reason to believe that the current and any future COP will reflect the past. COP 30 will be a story already told of noble words spoken, ambitions high (although not as high as some demands), deals negotiated with new targets and funding commitments, only to have not all targets met when deadlines fall.

From what I have been able to determine, every COP climate agreement since the first at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 has been a story of lofty ambitions and failed goals. At the first conference in Rio, participating countries agreed to “stabilize or cap” their greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. More than 30 years later, COP participants have still not achieved this initial goal, let alone any of the ever-stricter targets and commitments on climate finance mechanisms since set at the 29th meeting. Not a single commitment to reduce emissions or finance for climate adaptation has ever been met in the last three decades. This is a record of failure and futility.

In recent months, Australia, China and other countries have increased their use of fossil fuels, building mines and power plants with useful lives extending to 2050 and beyond.

SEE ALSO: Could this be the last United Nations climate conference?

From an image and logistics perspective, Belem was a poor choice for COP 30. Brazil mowed down thousands of acres of virgin rainforest to build concrete highways (talk about emissions) to get the participants there. And while climate delegates preach that eating meat is not only murder, but also the planet, attendees’ plates are overflowing with Brazilian beef and other meats. The contrast between the wealth displayed by the participants, arriving in limousines and private jets, eating sumptuous four-star meals, and the poverty of the surrounding city, where garbage fills many streets and overflows the gutters, could not be more stark.

The hypocrisy of the event is sickening. COP 30 will particularly focus on providing more money for forest protection. This goal would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. A good start would have been not to cut down vast areas of rainforest to hold the conference. And the discussions are being led by countries that encourage both the destruction of forests to power power plants fueled by wood and wood pellets, as well as the destruction of biodiverse tropical forests for palm plantations, to satisfy their desire for palm oil as a “green” biofuel.

This conference, perhaps like never before, clearly shows everyone that the climate emperor is truly naked and increasingly devoid of supporters.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, countries were required to provide detailed plans for how they will meet emissions reduction commitments they have already missed, as well as submit even tougher targets to be achieved by set deadlines in the future. The parties in Paris agreed to deliver these plans by February 10, 2025, but only 15 countries have met the original deadline. This fact forced the UN climate change lunatics to extend the deadline until September.

September has passed and only 69 of the 197 countries involved in the agreement have submitted their new plans. And the evidence suggests that the updated commitments submitted are not that impressive.

Japan has played a leading role in the fight for binding emissions reductions from the start, but between 2013 and 2024, Japan has provided around $93 billion for overseas oil and gas projects. The Center for International Law describes its new commitments as “the weakest national plan, without a single timetable or target for reducing fossil fuel production or increasing renewable energy.”

The good old European Union (EU) finalized its updated commitments just days before the start of COP 30. The EU plan has been almost universally described by mainstream media as “watered down” or “weakened.” In a Union meant to thrive on consensus, nearly a fifth of members either rejected the deal or abstained from voting for its adoption, despite compromises intended to garner universal support.

Speaking of compromises, the new EU plan falls far short of previously promised goals. It can cover up to 10 percent of the carbon reductions required by the purchase of carbon credits purchased on the international market. The plan also provides for the possibility of renegotiating objectives based on economic performance.

Ultimately, as has been the case in the past, I strongly suspect that upcoming deadlines will be missed, emissions reductions will not be achieved, if at all, and minimal funding will materialize. Even less of the funds actually disbursed will reach the people they are intended to help, as billions of dollars disappear, somehow get lost in the bureaucracy of the climate cabal, in corrupt governments, or end up in the pockets of profiteering, politically connected global elites.

In the global warming scam, past failures give government and NGO bureaucrats no qualms about spending billions more on trips and deals that are literally not worth the paper they are printed on. Indeed, it has never been a question of stabilizing the climate, an impossible objective if ever there was one, but always and only of money and power for the elites.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Illinois.

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