Five key takeaways from a deeply divisive climate summit

In three decades of these meetings aimed at building global consensus on how to prevent and deal with global warming, this meeting will be among the most divisive.

Many countries were angry when COP30 in Belém, Brazil, ended on Saturday with no mention of fossil fuels warming the atmosphere. Other nations, especially those who stood to gain most from continued production, felt vindicated.

The summit was a reality check on how far the global consensus on what to do about climate change has broken down.

Here are five key takeaways from what some call the “COP of truth.”

The most important thing to come out of COP30 is that the climate ‘ship’ is still afloat

But many participants are unhappy because they didn’t get anything close to what they wanted.

Despite the great sympathy for Brazil and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, there is disappointment in the way they are handling this meeting.

From the very beginning, there seemed to be a gap between what President Lula wanted this meeting to achieve and what the COP president, President André Corrêa do Lago, thought was possible.

So Lula talked about roadmaps away from fossil fuels to a handful of world leaders who arrived in Belém before the official start of the COP.

This idea was embraced by many countries, including the United Kingdom, and within days a campaign was launched to officially include this road map in negotiations.

Do Lago was not willing. The north star was consensus. He knew that bringing up the issue of fossil fuels would disrupt this situation.

Although there were some vague references to what appeared to be a road map in the initial text of the agreement, these had disappeared within a few days, never to return.

Colombia, the European Union and nearly 80 other countries tried to find language that would signal stronger action away from coal, oil and gas.

To reach consensus, Lago convened mutirão, a type of Brazilian group discussion.

It made the situation worse.

Negotiators from Arab countries have refused to meet with those who want to move away from fossil energy.

Large manufacturers did not pay much attention to the EU.

“We are making energy policy in our capital, not in your capital,” the Saudi delegate told them at the closed-door meeting, according to one observer.

Ah!

Nothing could bridge the gap and talks teetered on the brink of collapse.

Brazil has put forward the idea of ​​a face-saving roadmap on deforestation and fossil fuels that could exist outside the COP.

These were heartily applauded in the plenary halls, but their legal status is unclear.

They are still the richest group of nations in the world. Paris Agreement But this COP was not the European Union’s finest hour.

While they emphasized the need for a fossil fuel roadmap, they backed themselves into a corner with another aspect of the deal that they could not get out of in the end.

The idea of ​​tripling money for climate adaptation appeared in the first text and persisted into the final draft.

The wording was vague so that the EU would not object, but most importantly, the word “tripartite” remained in the text.

So when the EU tried to pressure the developing world to support the idea of ​​a fossil fuel roadmap, they had nothing to sweeten the deal; because the concept of tripling was already ready.

“Overall, we see that the European Union is backed into a corner,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Community, a long-time observer of climate policies.

“This partly reflects real-world power shifts, the rising power of the BASIC and BRIC countries and the decline of the European Union.”

The EU was outraged, but apart from shifting the trebling of funding from 2030 to 2035, they were forced to honor the deal and achieved little on the fossil fuel front.

The most persistent question asked throughout the two weeks here at COP30 was about the future of the ‘process’.

Two frequently heard positions are:

How significant is it to fly thousands of people around the world and sit in giant air-conditioned tents arguing about commas and the interpretation of complex words?

How ridiculous is it that the fundamental debates here about how to strengthen our world are taking place at 3 in the morning among sleep-deprived delegates who haven’t been home for weeks?

The COP idea served the world well in eventually implementing the Paris climate agreement; but that was ten years ago and many participants felt that it no longer had a clear and strong purpose.

“We can’t completely ignore this,” Harjeet Singh, an activist with the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told BBC News.

“But this requires a refresh. We will need processes outside of this system to help complement what we’ve done so far.”

Pertinent questions about energy costs and how countries will achieve net-zero emissions have never been more critical; But the idea of ​​a COP seems far removed from the daily lives of billions of people.

It is a process of consensus from a different era. We are no longer in that world.

Brazil has recognized some of these problems and has tried to make it an “enforcement police”, focusing heavily on its “energy agenda”. But no one knows what these ideas actually mean.

COP leaders read the room; They are trying to find a new approach that is needed, otherwise this conference will lose all relevance.

For the first time, global trade became one of the main topics of these talks. According to senior COP observer Alden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G, there was an “orchestrated” effort to raise the issue in every negotiating chamber.

‘What does this have to do with climate change?’ You’re probably thinking.

The answer is that the European Union is planning to impose border duties on some high-carbon products such as steel, fertilizer, cement and aluminium, and many trading partners, especially China, India and Saudi Arabia, are not happy about this.

They say it’s unfair for a major trading bloc to impose what they call a unilateral (the technical term is “unilateral”) measure because it would make the goods they sell to Europe more expensive and therefore less competitive.

Europeans say this is wrong because the measure is about cutting planet-warming gases and tackling climate change, not about strangling trade. They already charge their own manufacturers of these products a fee for the emissions they create, and say the border tax is a way to protect them from less environmentally friendly but cheaper imports from abroad.

If you don’t want to pay our border tax, they say, charge your polluting industries an emission fee and collect the money yourself.

Economists like this idea because the more expensive it becomes to pollute, the more likely it is that we will all switch to clean energy alternatives. But of course, this also means we pay more for every product we buy that contains contaminants.

The issue was resolved here in Brazil by a classic COP compromise, moving discussions into future talks. The final agreement kicked off an ongoing dialogue on trade for future UN climate negotiations involving governments as well as other actors such as the World Trade Organization.

China and the United States, the world’s two largest carbon emitters, had similar impacts on this COP but achieved them in different ways.

US President Donald Trump stayed away, but his stance encouraged his allies here.

Russia, normally a relatively quiet participant, has been prominent in blocking efforts on roadmaps. While Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers have been predictably hostile to limiting fossil fuels, China has remained quiet and focused on making deals.

And experts say that ultimately China’s work will surpass that of the United States and their efforts to sell fossil fuels.

“China has kept a low political profile,” says Li Shuo of the Asia Society.

“And they focused on making money in the real world.”

“Solar energy is the cheapest energy source and the long-term direction is very clear; China dominates this sector, which puts the United States in a very difficult position.”