Five key takeaways from a deeply controversial climate summit

In three decades of meetings aimed at forging a global consensus on how to prevent and manage global warming, this meeting will remain among the most controversial.

Many countries were furious when COP30 in Belém, Brazil, ended on Saturday without any mention of fossil fuels warming the atmosphere. Other countries – particularly those with the most to gain from continued production – felt vindicated.

The summit highlighted the extent to which global consensus has collapsed on what action to take on climate change.

Here are five key takeaways from what some have called the “truth COP.”

The most important thing to come out of COP30 is that the climate “ship” is still afloat.

But many participants are unhappy that they didn’t get something that was what they wanted.

And despite a lot of warmth towards Brazil and towards President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, there is some frustration with the way they conducted this meeting.

From the start, there seemed to be a gap between what President Lula wanted to achieve from this meeting and what COP President André Corrêa do Lago saw as possible.

Lula therefore spoke about roadmaps for moving away from fossil fuels to the handful of world leaders who came to Belém before the official start of the COP.

The idea was taken up by a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, and a few days later a campaign was launched to formally include this roadmap in the negotiations.

Do Lago was not enthusiastic. His pole star was the consensus. He knew that putting the issue of fossil fuels on the agenda would put an end to this situation.

While the initial text of the agreement contained vague references to elements that resembled a road map, within days they had disappeared, never to return.

Colombia, the European Union and about 80 countries have tried to find language that would signal a greater shift away from coal, oil and gas.

To find consensus, do Lago convened a mutirão, a kind of Brazilian group discussion.

This only made things worse.

Negotiators from Arab countries have refused to join caucuses of those who want to move away from fossil fuels.

The EU has been left behind by the big producers.

“We make energy policy in our capital, not yours,” the Saudi delegate told them in a closed-door meeting, according to an observer.

Ouch!

Nothing could bridge the gap – and the negotiations were on the verge of failure.

Brazil came up with the idea, to save face, of roadmaps on deforestation and fossil fuels that would exist outside the COP.

These were warmly applauded in the plenary rooms – but their legal status is uncertain.

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

While they spoke out about the need for a road map on fossil fuels, they came up against another aspect of the agreement from which they were ultimately unable to withdraw.

The idea of ​​tripling funds for climate adaptation was in the first text and survived in the final version.

The wording was vague, so the EU did not object – but the word “triple” remained in the text.

So when the EU tried to pressure developing countries to support the idea of ​​a fossil fuel roadmap, they found nothing to sweeten the deal – because the concept of tripling was already in place.

“Overall, we are seeing a cornered European Union,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society, a longtime observer of climate policy.

“This partly reflects the shift in power in the real world, the emerging power of the BASIC and BRIC countries and the decline of the European Union.”

The EU fumed, but in addition to delaying the tripling of funding from 2030 to 2035, it had to accept the deal, and it achieved very little on the fossil fuel front.

The most persistent question asked here at COP30 over these two weeks concerned the future of the “process” itself.

Two positions often heard:

How barbaric is it to fly thousands of people halfway around the world to sit in giant air-conditioned tents and discuss commas and convoluted word interpretations?

Isn’t it ridiculous that the key discussions here, about the very future of how we will power our world, are taking place at 3 a.m. among sleep-deprived delegates who haven’t been home in weeks?

The COP idea served the world well, ultimately leading to the Paris climate agreement – ​​but that was a decade ago and many participants feel it no longer has a clear, powerful purpose.

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

“But it requires an upgrade. We’ll need processes outside of that system to complement what we’ve done so far.”

Energy costs and legitimate questions about how countries achieve net zero emissions have never been more critical – and yet the idea of ​​the COP seems far removed from the daily lives of billions of people.

This is a consensus process that comes from another era. We are no longer in this world.

Brazil recognized some of these problems and tried to make it an “implementation cop” and put emphasis on the “energy agenda”. But no one really knows what these ideas actually mean.

The COP leaders are reading the room – they are trying to find a new approach that is necessary, otherwise this conference will become irrelevant.

For the first time, global trade has become one of the key issues in these negotiations. There was an “orchestrated” effort to raise it in every negotiating room, according to veteran COP observer Alden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G.

“What does this have to do with climate change?” » you are probably thinking.

The answer is that the European Union is considering introducing a border tax on some high-carbon products like steel, fertilizer, cement and aluminum and many of its trading partners, including China, India and Saudi Arabia, are unhappy about it.

They believe it is not right for a large trading bloc to impose what they call a unilateral measure – “unilateral” is the technical term – like this, because it will make the products they sell in Europe more expensive – and therefore less competitive.

The Europeans believe that this is a mistake because this measure is not aimed at stifling trade but at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change. They already charge their own producers 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 foreign imports.

If you don’t want to pay our border tax, they say, just impose emissions taxes on your polluting industries – collect the money yourselves.

Economists like this idea because the more expensive pollution is, the more likely we are all to switch to clean energy alternatives. Of course, this also means that we will pay more for any goods we buy that contain polluting materials.

The issue was resolved here in Brazil with a classic COP compromise – pushing discussions towards future negotiations. The final agreement launched an ongoing dialogue on trade in preparation for future UN climate negotiations, involving governments as well as other actors such as the World Trade Organization.

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

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

Russia, normally a relatively quiet participant, has been at the forefront of blocking efforts on the road maps. And while Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers were predictably hostile to cutting fossil fuels, China remained silent and focused on making deals.

And ultimately, experts say, China’s trade activities will surpass those of the United States and its 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 power is the cheapest energy source, and the long-term direction is very clear. China dominates in this sector and that puts the United States in a very difficult position.”