COP 30: it’s no joke

Nov.23,  2025

The usual joke about the United Nations Climate Change Conferences (COPs) is that each one is a ‘cop-out’.  Each time there is a failure to agree on ending fossil fuel production as the source of energy, even though it is now well established that carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions come mainly from the use of fossil fuels.  Each time there is a failure to agree to significant planned and implemented reductions in emissions from all sources, production, transport, wars etc.  Each time, there is a failure to agree any significant reversal of unending deforestation, the polluting of the seas and the accelerating extinction of species and diversity.

The joke of saying it is a ‘cop-out’ has now worn thin to the bone. COP30 was no joke, even if the ‘agreement’ reached was one. Time has run out. The world is hotting up to the point of tipping into irreversible damage to humanity, other species and the planet itself.

Harjeet Singh of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “Cop30 will go down in history as the deadliest talkshow ever produced.”  Negotiators at Belem, Brazil “spent days discussing what to discuss and inventing new dialogues solely to avoid the actions that matter: committing to a just transition away from fossil fuels and putting money on the table.”  But the core issue of a “transition away from fossil fuels” was dropped as the fossil fuel nations and most of the Western powers blocked it. Even the weak watered down idea of a ‘roadmap’ to a transition was opposed.

Also at stake was the question of how countries should respond to the fact that current national climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), would lead to about 2.5°C of global temperature above preindustrial levels, far above the 1.5C limit target set by the 2015 Paris COP agreement. The COP30 ‘agreement’ was to “continue talking about” the large gap between countries’ targets and the carbon emission cuts necessary to stay within 1.5C.

The climate scientists at COP30 made it clear – yet again. Emissions must start to bend next year, they say, and then continue to fall steadily in the decades ahead: “We need to start, now, to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels, by at least 5% per year. This must happen in order to have a chance to avoid unmanageable and extremely costly climate impacts affecting all people in the world.” Emission reductions need to be accelerated: “We need to be as close as possible to absolute zero fossil fuel emissions by 2040, the latest by 2045. This means globally no new fossil fuel investments, removing all subsidies from fossil fuels and a global plan on how to phase in renewable and low-carbon energy sources in a just way, and phase out fossil fuels quickly.”

The scientists added that finance – from developed to developing countries – is essential for the credibility of the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at keeping the rise in global temperature no higher than 1.5C. “It must be predictable, grant-based and consistent with a just transition and equity,” they said. “Without scaling and reforming climate finance, developing countries cannot plan, cannot invest and cannot deliver the transitions needed for a shared survival.” COP30 got an agreement to increase funding from the rich countries to the poor – but the increased funding would be spread over the next ten years, not five years as before!

Instead , global oil and gas demand is set to rise for the next 25 years if the world does not change course, according to the International Energy Agency in its latest report. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite ‘exponential’ growth of renewables. Coal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy.

So global CO2 emissions will rise, not fall. Annual global energy-related CO2 emissions will rise slightly from current levels and approach 40 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year in the early 2030s, remaining around this level through to 2050. Emissions may fall in advanced economies, most substantially in Europe, and also decline in China from 2030 onwards, but they increase elsewhere.

And it’s not just carbon emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and is responsible for about a third of the warming recently recorded. At previous ‘cop-outs’ it was agreed to a cut in methane emissions of 30% by 2030. Yet methane emissions have continued to increase. Collectively, emissions from six of the biggest signatories – the US, Australia, Kuwait, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq – are now 8.5% above the 2020 level.

So the world is getter hotter. This year and the last two years were the three hottest years in 176 years of records, And the past 11 years, back to 2015, will also be the 11 warmest years on record. Tipping points (irreversible) are being reached: glaciers melting; forests disappearing; wildfires, floods and droughts increasing.  The world is heading for 2.8°C warming, as the latest UN report reveals climate pledges are ‘barely moving the needle’.

The UNEP’s ‘Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target’ finds that available new climate pledges under the Paris Agreement have only slightly lowered the pace of  the global temperature rise over the course of the 21st century, leaving the world heading for a serious escalation of climate risks and damages. Fewer than a third of the world’s nations (62 out of 197) have sent in their climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement. The US, the country that is the biggest emitter per person, has abandoned the process – the US did not turn up at COP30. Europe has also failed to deliver.  None of the 45 global climate indicators analysed are on track for 2030.

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data show. The global average concentration of the gas surged by 3.5 parts per million to 424ppm in 2024, the largest increase since modern measurements started in 1957, according to the report by the World Meteorological Organization.

Several factors contributed to the leap in CO2, including another year of unrelenting fossil fuel burning. Another factor was an upsurge in wildfires in conditions made hotter and drier by global heating. Wildfire emissions in the Americas reached historic levels in 2024, which was the hottest year yet recorded. Climate scientists are also concerned about a third factor: the possibility that the planet’s carbon sinks are beginning to fail. About half of all CO2 emissions every year are taken back out of the atmosphere by being dissolved in the ocean or being sucked up by growing trees and plants. But the oceans are getting hotter and can therefore absorb less CO2 while on land hotter and drier conditions and more wildfires mean less plant growth.

Reductions to annual emissions of 35 per cent and 55 per cent, compared with 2019 levels, are needed in 2035 to align with the Paris Agreement 2°C and 1.5°C pathways, respectively. Given the size of the cuts needed, the short time available to deliver them and a challenging political climate, a permanently higher rise in global temperature is unavoidable before the end of this decade.  The Paris target is as dead as the people and species dying from climate change.

Indeed, rising global heat is now killing one person a minute around the world, a major report on the health impact of the climate crisis has revealed. The report says the rate of heat-related deaths has surged by 23% since the 1990s, even after accounting for increases in populations, to an average of 546,000 a year between 2012 and 2021. In the past four years, the average person has been exposed to 19 days a year of life-threatening heat and 16 of those days would not have happened without human-caused global heating, the report says. Overall, exposure to high temperatures resulted in a record 639bn hours of lost labour in 2024, which caused losses of 6% of national GDP in the least developed nations.

The continued burning of fossil fuels not only heats the planet but also produces air pollution, causing millions of deaths a year. Wildfires, stoked by increasingly hot and dry conditions, are adding to the deaths caused by smoke, with a record 154,000 deaths recorded in 2024, the report says. Droughts and heatwaves damage crops and livestock and 123 million more people endured food insecurity in 2023, compared with the annual average between 1981 and 2010.

Why are the targets for reducing emissions not being met or now even agreed?  The answer is money.  Despite the harm, the world’s governments provided $956bn in direct fossil fuel subsidies in 2023. This dwarfed the $300bn a year pledged at the UN climate summit Cop29 in 2024 to support the most climate-vulnerable countries. The UK provided $28bn in fossil fuel subsidies in 2023 and Australia allocated $11bn. Fifteen countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Venezuela and Algeria spent more on fossil fuel subsidies than on their national health budgets.

The world’s 100 largest fossil fuel companies increased their projected production in the year up to March 2025, which would lead to carbon dioxide emissions three times those compatible with the Paris climate agreement target of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the report says. Commercial banks are supporting this expansion, with the top 40 lenders to the fossil fuel sector collectively investing a five-year high of $611bn in 2024. Their ‘green sector’ lending was lower at $532bn.

The reason for expanding fossil fuel production is that it is just much more profitable than switching to renewables. The problem is that governments are insisting that private investment should lead the drive to renewable power.  But private investment only takes place if it is profitable to invest. 

Profitability is the problem – in two ways.  First, average profitability globally is at low levels and so investment growth in everything has similarly slowed. Prices of renewables have fallen sharply in the last few years.  Ironically, lower renewables prices drag down the profitability of such investments.  Solar panel manufacturing is suffering a severe profit squeeze, along with operators of solar farms. This reveals the fundamental contradiction in capitalist investment between reducing costs through higher productivity and slowing investment because of falling profitability.

Brett Christophers in his book, The Price is Wrong – why capitalism won’t save the planet, argues that it is not the price of renewables versus fossil fuel energy that is the obstacle to meeting the investment targets to limit global warming.  It is the profitability of renewables compared to fossil fuel production. Christophers shows that in a country such as Sweden, wind power can be produced very cheaply.  But the very cheapening of the costs also depresses its revenue potential.  This contradiction has increased the arguments of fossil fuel companies that oil and gas production cannot be phased out quickly. Peter Martin, Wood Mackenzie’s chief economist, explained it another way: “the increased cost of capital has profound implications for the energy and natural resource industries”, and that higher rates “disproportionately affect renewables and nuclear power because of their high capital intensity and low returns.”

As Christophers points out, the profitability of oil and gas has generally been far higher than that of renewables and that explains why, in the 1980s and 1990s, the oil and gas majors unceremoniously shuttered their first ventures in the renewables almost as soon as they had launched them. “The same comparative calculus equally explains why the same companies are shifting to clean energy at no more than a snail’s pace today”.

Christophers quotes Shell’s CEO Wael Sawan, in response to a question about whether he considered renewables’ lower returns acceptable for his company: “I think on low carbon, let me be, I think, categorical in this. We will drive for strong returns in any business we go into. We cannot justify going for a low return. Our shareholders deserve to see us going after strong returns. If we cannot achieve the double-digit returns in a business, we need to question very hard whether we should continue in that business. Absolutely, we want to continue to go for lower and lower and lower carbon, but it has to be profitable.”

For these reasons, JP Morgan bank economists conclude that “The world needs a “reality check” on its move from fossil fuels to renewable energy, saying it may take “generations” to hit net-zero targets.  JPMorgan reckons changing the world’s energy system “is a process that should be measured in decades, or generations, not years”. That’s because investment in renewable energy “currently offers subpar returns”. 

The only way humanity has a chance of avoiding a climate disaster will be through a global plan based on common ownership of resources and technology that replaces the capitalist market system. Meanwhile, the cop-out continues.