The COP 30 Climate Summit has opened in Brazil with a message from the United Nations (UN) that countries should seek co-operation rather than battle over competing priorities that continues to fracture the consensus seeking approach of the gathering. 

Host country Brazil brokered a deal on the agenda for the two-week summit in the Amazon city of Belem, deflecting attempts by developing country negotiating blocs to shoehorn contentious issues like climate finance and carbon taxes into the talks.

The gathering expects some 50 000 delegates from governments, civil society and the private sector in the latest effort to protect the planet from climate catastrophe.

With over 190 countries participating in this year’s event, the urgency is palpable after the latest UN Emissions Gap Report found that under the Paris Climate Agreement, available new climate pledges have only slightly lowered global temperature rise over the course of this century, leaving the world heading for a serious escalation of climate risks and damages.

Meanwhile the United States is boycotting the gathering given a shift in America’s approach after President Donald Trump made his views on climate change clear at the UN General Assembly this September.

“The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction. I withdrew from the fake Paris climate accord, whereby the way America was paying so much more than every country, others weren’t paying. If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world. But then it started getting cooler. 

And so now they could just call it climate change, because that way they can’t miss climate change, because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens is climate change. It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated.”

–SABC–