“The world isn’t running out of time — it’s run out. What’s left is political theater performed by arsonists pretending to be firefighters.”
- adaptationguide.com
COP30: Welcome Back to the Circus Tent — Where the World Burns While Leaders Argue About the Color of the Exit Sign
By now, we’ve had thirty Climate Conferences. Thirty. The planet is coughing up blood, the U.S. coastlines are dissolving like sugar cubes in warm water, Russia’s soil is basically a bubbling toxic soup they still call “earth,” and China—well, if Beijing ever tells the truth about the origin of the virus, we’ll all die of shock before climate change gets us.
And here we are again, COP30 in Belém:
a political carnival, a diplomatic séance, a bureaucratic burn-the-clock marathon, staged at the mouth of the Amazon — the lungs of the planet, currently wheezing from deforestation, drought, fire, and hypocrisy.
Brazil Opens COP30 by Saying Fossil Fuels Must End — While Drilling for More Oil
This is the kind of comedy you can’t write.
Lula, in a plot twist worthy of satire, opens the conference by declaring the world must end its dependence on fossil fuels “as soon as possible.”
Beautiful. Inspiring. Necessary.
Except Brazil is also on track to become the fourth-largest oil producer on Earth by 2030 — by drilling in the Amazon River delta, right next to the host city.
It’s like telling the world to quit smoking while opening a new cigarette factory in your living room.
Germany Arrives Like the Straight-A Student — Bragging About Homework No One Else Did
Germany struts into Belém declaring:
“We will sign anything — absolutely anything — that moves us away from fossil fuels.”
Of course they will.
They already planned to hit net-zero by 2045, five years earlier than the global target. They’ve built new gas plants that can transform into hydrogen plants later, like Transformers for techno-climate optimism.
Other countries look at Germany and say:
“Good for you, Angela Merkel’s Ghost, but we can’t afford that.”
Producers, especially, are pissed.
If your GDP is basically a petrochemical sales pitch, the idea of a fossil-fuel phase-out proposal is not a “compass” — it’s a bullet.
The Global South Wants Climate Cash — The Global North Promises Roadmaps
Last year in Azerbaijan, COP created the “Roadmap Baku to Belém.”
Its mission? Figure out how to raise $1.3 trillion per year so poorer countries can build climate-resilient futures while rich countries keep pretending they’re going to pay their bills this time.
This year, that roadmap is supposed to be unveiled.
And if it actually exists — if the document is not just a PDF-shaped mirage — then it might serve as the template for a global fossil-fuel exit.
Might.
But remember:
These are the same governments that still haven’t delivered the $100 billion they promised in 2009.
Climate finance is basically the geopolitical version of “your check is in the mail.”
The Amazon Burns, the Oceans Rise, and COP30 Still Can’t Decide What to Talk About
Delegates from nearly 200 countries cannot even agree on the topics for the ministerial meetings.
This is COP culture:
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Argue for five days about whether the agenda should include arguments.
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Announce a watered-down “commitment” everyone can misinterpret back home.
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Fly home in private jets while issuing statements about reducing emissions.
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Repeat next year in a country drowning, burning, or both.
Meanwhile:
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The U.S. coastline is toast, collapsing under rising seas, mega-storms, and infrastructure older than the grandparents at your family reunion.
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Russia’s landscapes are so contaminated, melting permafrost is releasing ghost plagues and industrial waste from Soviet times.
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China’s emissions hit record highs, while transparency stays at record lows — especially concerning pandemics past, present, and future.
But yes, let’s spend more days debating whether the word “phase-out” is too aggressive and whether "transition away" sounds nicer.
Belém Won’t Deliver the Fossil Exit — but It Might Deliver the Blueprint for One
That’s the tragic optimism here.
Not action — but planning for possible action maybe next year, if everyone behaves, and if petro-states don’t pull the plug, and if the world isn’t on fire, and if the Amazon is not turned into a giant savanna first.
COP30 won’t decide to stop fossil fuels.
But it might instruct the presidency to design the outlines of a possible fossil-fuel exit scenario for COP31.
This is progress in climate diplomacy:
not doing the thing,
but scheduling a meeting about creating the outline of a draft for the thing.
Belém Is a Warning: The Window for “Diplomatic Incrementalism” Is Gone
The planet doesn’t care about “roadmaps.”
It cares about heat.
Oceans don’t care about “compasses.”
They care about absorbing so much CO₂ they turn into carbonic acid cauldrons.
Indigenous communities don’t care about 2050 neutrality targets.
They care about rivers staying rivers, not ditches of mud and mining waste.
We have already entered the Era of Consequences.
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The U.S. coastline is retreating.
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Russia is literally sinking as permafrost collapses.
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China’s food supply is wobbling under climate-driven extremes.
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Europe is toggling between biblical floods and Sahara-grade heatwaves.
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South America is burning, drowning, and destabilizing all at once.
And still:
The world’s leaders gather for the 30th time under the COP circus tent, searching desperately for one — just one — positive headline.
Good luck.
Even the Amazon dolphins are fleeing.
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