COP30 and the decline of the global climate protests

[Joseph]

Some thoughts about COP30 and the decline of the global climate protests

There was at one time a good deal of hope around the UN Climate Change Conferences and the Kyoto Protocol (anyone remember it?). Actually, the reliance on market measures in the Kyoto Protocol was a fatal flaw right from the start. Still, there had been hopes that the Kyoto Protocol might gradually be strengthened, much as the Montreal Protocol in defense of the ozone layer had been improved year by year.

But this was not to be. The first period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol ended in 2012, the following voluntary agreements meant little, and things went further downhill year by year, weaker and weaker and weaker. COP21 in 2015 saw the Paris Agreements which, while lauded by the bourgeois press, were a disastrous sign that the world bourgeoisie had given up any serious effort.

In the years since then, the COP conferences have become more and more of a charade. COP26 to 29 became notorious for the huge number of fossil fuel company lobbyists that attended. As one environmental group said, “Just 90 oil and gas corporations that attended COP26 to 29 [were] responsible for nearly 60% of global oil and gas production in 2024”. (https://kickbigpollutersout.org/COP30-F ... s-Briefing) For that matter, in 2023 COP28 was held in Dubai, the capital of a major oil state, the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, the president of COP28 was the head of the state oil company of UAE, Sultan Al Jaber. The destroyers of the climate were declared to be its saviors!

This year COP30 comes while Trump has put the U.S. government on record as declaring climate change a fraud, and with the threat of growing fascism and anti-environmentalism around the world. True, there has also been technical progress in many fields, improvements in green energy, more knowledge about the connections of climate change with the overall environmental crisis facing the world, and so on. But overall the world is moving faster and faster to disaster, the U.S. government is tearing down as much environmental research as it can, and the world bourgeoisie may have concern with this or that financial issue, such as who produces electric cars or batteries, but is leading the world merrily over the cliff.

Indeed, COP30 takes place at a time when there can no longer be any serious hope that the world will escape major climate disasters on a scale that the world hasn’t seen anytime in the last geological era (the Holocene, the last 11,700 years). We still must work to limit greenhouse emissions, but we have already passed various critical points. The UN and its scientific body, the IPCC, may still issue reports of some value with respect to what the climate situation is, but they have no solutions; they will not and can’t say anything but what the ruling governments and large corporations will allow -- that is what it means to be a UN agency-- and the COP conferences have become sickening displays of greenwashing.

There are environmental movements all over the world, both the continuing indigenous movements and other struggles. For several years, there were global demonstrations denouncing the world’s governments and the UN for failing to take real action and instead being sources of hot air. But the world bourgeoisie didn’t change its course, and it’s no longer sufficient to demand that the governments do something effective. It’s necessary for the environmental movement to consider more concretely what has to be done.

For a time, there were loud and massive protests about this. As it became clearer and clearer that the world bourgeoisie had given up any serious attempt to have global warming restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius, there was one action after another. Recall some examples: the widespread denunciation of the Paris Conference (COP21) in 2015. There was the global strike of March 15, 2019 with over 1 million participants in 2,000 actions in 125 countries. In September there were more climate actions around the world. And a few months later, in December 2019, organizers claimed that there were half a million protesters outside COP25 in Madrid. There were the global anti-greenwashing demonstrations against COP26 in 2021. And by COP27 in 2022, Scientist Rebellion and 1,000 academics already declared that it was indefensible to say in public that the 1.5 limit was still alive. See our article “COP27: Greenwashing the road to disaster” (https://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-221123.html)

But for some time, there has been a certain paralysis. Perhaps at first this was partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic discouraging mass gatherings, which were even banned in some places, but this is hardly the whole story. Indeed the paralysis has continued. This year, the global response to COP30 has been relatively small.

There is a crisis throughout the environmental movement. The movement is still there, and important actions take place against this or that environmental atrocity. Activists continue the struggle in the face of all difficulties and even deadly repression. And these continuing actions are important. But there is no unified response to the new situation, where horrible catastrophe is on the coming agenda. There is no longer any real hope of the warming staying under 1.5 degrees C - environmental scientists already pointed this out several years ago. It no longer is realistic to say, take serious measures or else there will be disasters. Today, we must both take serious measures against global warming and prepare for the disasters that are already inevitable.

Below are some links about COP30. I hope other comrades will provide more links about what’s going on in COP30, about what environmental groups are saying and doing, about what the radical left is saying. And we should review what we said about the different trends in the environmental movement in the past (https://www.communistvoice.org/00SavingThePlanet.html) and about what we should continue saying, and what we need to add now that the situation has changed. It would be very good if comrades can report on what this or that environmental group is doing and saying, what this or that left group is doing and saying on this issue, and so forth.

Some links about COP30 from the bourgeois press and from certain groups.

This gives some idea of the official UN EP (Environmental Program) standpoint: https://www.unep.org/topics/climate-action.

It says that there is a threat that warming will go beyond 2.9 degrees C in this century. But it presents that the UN program could stop this. And then presents “a four-pronged approach” that says nothing about stopping the major forces pushing us faster and faster to disaster. There is nothing about the huge power of the rightist fossil fuel companies and other polluters. There is nothing about the planning needed if greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced rapidly, or for working people and food production and economic life to survive environmental disasters. On one key issue after another, there is silence.


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Another report from the UN EP: “New climate pledges [would] only slightly lower dangerous global warming projections”
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/p ... al-warming

This report says that “Global temperatures now predicted to reach 2.3-2.5°C, down from [the previous prediction of] 2.6-2.8°C last year.” However, this would still be utter disaster. It also says that “a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable- starting, at the latest, in the early 2030s.” But don’t worry, it suggests, this is only temporary.

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The Sierra Club had the following article on COP30:

“COP30 Forges Ahead as World’s Biggest Emitter, the United States, Stays Absent/ With no delegation, the US has left a vacuum that others are already filling”.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/cop30 ... ays-absent

This article denounces Trump silent but is about the failures of the UN program. It is blithely optimistic, ignores the ongoing crisis, and declares that COP30 is forging ahead. This is its example of how climate action “will be determined, as it always has been, by people all over the world demanding action."

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The Global Action Network International writes about world protests in an article entitled“ Global marches call on governments at COP30 to deliver climate justice”

https://climatenetwork.org/2025/11/15/g ... e-justice/

It’s good that actions are taking place. But they are nowhere near on the scale of the past, and they don’t deal with the issues that have caused the movement to decline. And the call of these demonstrations doesn’t deal with what to do given that we know that the governments aren’t going to provide “climate justice” at COP30. What the governments are doing is moving towards more environmental devastation, anti-immigrant frenzy, and more and more subsidies to the rich.

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This is a report on the indigenous movement protesting at COP30:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ten ... 22263.html

“Tens of thousands demonstrate at COP30 climate summit in Brazil”

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The Indigenous Environmental Movement has written a lot of militant pamphlets, but yet writes” The world must unite around a climate plan/Ahead of COP30 in Brazil, the Planetary Guardians and friends call for a bold plan to phase out fossil fuels and build a clean, secure energy future for all”

https://www.ienearth.org/the-world-must ... mate-plan/

But it is optimistic about COP30, declares that it “offers a symbolic and practical opportunity to realign global ambition with planetary reality’, and says that “business leaders already understand this”, that is, what it is saying about the environment.
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[Joseph]

Eric has sent me on email a list of material from the coverage of "Climate and Capitalism" on COP30. It's quite useful to take a look at this. He did a search via site:climateandcapitalism.com cop30 .That searches for the term "cop30" only on the website climateandcapitalism.org.

It came up with:

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2025/0 ... of-people/:
Decisive Action Needed
‘Climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people’
July 9, 2025
Statement adopted by the Global Tipping Points Conference, June 30-July 3


https://climateandcapitalism.com/2025/1 ... -projects/:
Extraction Extinction
Fossil fuel projects threaten health and rights of two billion people
November 13, 2025

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2025/1 ... -promises/:
COP30
Emission reductions: Promises, promises, promises
November 8, 2025
COP30 meets ten years after the Paris Agreement, and Earth is warming faster than ever
Share:


https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/1 ... ervations/ (from COP28, but referencing COP30):
COPout 28
Taking stock of COP28: Thirteen observations
December 15, 2023
Final declaration of the debacle in Dubai mentioned fossil fuel, but promised nothinng.

He remarked "It is a pretty meager list".

And indeed it is, because the articles don't go very far into their subject. For example, they don't talk about the state of the environmental movement. There is a brief report on the Global Tipping Point Conference, which is useful to report on, but there is no assessment of what it represents. It reports that the conference calls for "decisive action" but what does this consist of? the Conference simply gives a call for some general good things from "policy and civil society". "Climate and Capitalism" doesn't go into what this is, or what it would regard as decisive action.

Or take the article on the "Extraction Extinction" report from Amnesty International and Better Planet Laboratory. There is some information on the danger. But what it all comes down to is concluding that "the climate crisis is a manifestation and catalyst of deep-rooted injustices", and "we must resist collectively and demand that world leaders deliver on their obligations and commitments." Well, the article quotes that from Agnes Callamard, but has nothing beyond that.

The article on "Emission reductions: Promises, promises, promises" gets no further than what was set forward several years ago in the global demonstrations. It says: "As Greta Thunberg said four years ago, before COP26: 'Blah blah blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great, but so far have led to no action.'" It's a powerful statement from Thunberg. But what about what that action should be, and what should be done given that the leaders aren't going to take it. We can't stop at simply repeating Thunberg's statement.

The article on COP28 give some good criticisms of COP28, but no alternative.

In other words, "Climate and Capitalism" reports on some things in the movement, but really has nothing to say to it. It's marking time. For example, it doesn't discuss the state of the movement. It doesn't discuss what decisive action would be. It is at a loss to deal with the present situation -- neither what to do in the face of the tragedies that are coming closer and closer, nor how to deal with the stagnation presently in the movement. And it doesn't even refer to the different trends within the environmental activist and protest movements, showing that its socialist words don't signify any effective struggle to show the nature of establishment environmentalism.

[pete]

Results of a quick search on the internet for climate protests:

Extinction Rebellion has held some local protests recently, one to protect the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, another to stop or regulate coal mines in South Africa, another against banks in Hamburg and Boston that finance fossil fuels. They don't seem to have any national or international big demos planned. Their big news is that renewables are now cheaper sources of electricity than fossil fuel sources. They say this will 'seal the transition.'

This optimism is shared by Bill McKibben, who has a new book out and a new organization called Third Act, an environmental activist group for seniors (people over 60). Third Act sponsored a set of demos on Sept. 21 called Sun Day, promoting solar power. On Democracy Now, McKibben waxed enthusiastic about cheap solar power in China, Pakistan, Europe, etc. -- everywhere but the U.S., where Trump is fighting it. I didn't find any news about the Sun Day events except on a website called Microgrid, which promotes solar power:

Sun Day 2025: Communities Rally for Clean Energy and Climate Action
Published on September 23, 2025 by Jonas Muthoni
https://microgridmedia.com/sun-day-2025 ... an-energy/

McKibben promotes local events as the way to advance the movement. He says we can't do anything nationally with the Trumpists in charge. The thing to do is to convince municipalities to ease up on solar power installation, make the permitting easier, etc., and this will eventually spread.

Wikipedia has a big article about Climate Strike, the movement led by Greta Thunberg and other activists in Europe. But it's an old article. It seems the movement was totally wiped out by the covid pandemic. Thunberg tried to keep it up by switching to "digital climate strikes", where activists would hold up signs for a camera and post it on the internet. But the last mention of those attempts were dated 2022 or 2023.

[pete]

iran enviro.docx

(19.24 KiB) Downloaded 55 times

[Frank]

Re: environmental protests, this is from Carnegeie's tracker: https://carnegieendowment.org/features/ ... er?lang=en. It's incomplete because I know there have been protests in Pakistan, the Ahwaz region of Iran and parts on India that are not listed. But it does give a picture of generally quite small protests over the past 2-3 years.

Politico quotes several leading people from mainstream U.S. environmental groups saying they're no longer attempting to organize big national actions, like they did during Trump's first term. They say they're focusing on local protests instead.

[Frank]

The article by Patrick Bond linked to below does not deal with what is going on in the environmental movement, but it does deal with the recent G20 meeting (held in South Africa) and COP30. One of the things he points out early is that when their capitalist interests are imperiled the G20 leaders can unite around a unitary policy, as they did during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID 19 pandemic. But although Bond doesn't put it this way, the unity of both the G20 and COP remains environmental wrecking. This is what he writes about COP30:

The Leaders’ Declaration [G20 leaders—Fk] was correct to brag about the COP30: “We highlight the successful outcomes of the 2025 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém.” After all, ruling classes from the G1, the other G7s and the BRICS have – since the 2009 Copenhagen Accord – resolutely lined up against everyone else, on three foundational positions:

1) do not agree to cut emissions or leave fossil fuels underground to the extent necessary to save us all from planetary catastrophe;

2) do not admit you emitted by acknowledging the ‘polluter pays’ principle because you’ll face liability claims, and have to pay ‘climate debt’ and reparations (as even the ICJ in July 2025 ruled is logical);

3) instead, do limit climate finance to loans, and ‘privatize the air’ through carbon markets, dubious offsets and other emissions-trading gimmickry.

From these three standpoints, COP30 was a roaring success for the G20 ultra-polluters. One obvious conclusion is that a ‘Global North’ (bad, villains) versus a ‘Global South’ (good, victims) is not an appropriate framing. Instead we have a configuration that allows the COP30 – like so many before it – to fuse imperial and subimperial interests. Speaking to the BBC, Li Shuo of the Asia Society remarked, “This partly reflects the power shift in the real world, the emerging power of the BASIC and BRICS countries, and the decline of the European Union.” (BASIC is Brazil, South Africa, India and China).

The BBC continued, “US President Donald Trump stayed away, but his stance emboldened his allies here. Russia, normally a relatively quiet participant, was to the fore in blocking efforts on roadmaps [to phase out oil, gas and coal]. And while Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers were predictably hostile to curbing fossil fuels, China stayed quiet and concentrated on doing deals.”

In addition to the U.S. – also absent from Belém due to Trump’s anti-science climate denialism – and Russia, the 24-member ‘Like Minded Group of Developing Countries’ is to blame for preventing fossil fuels from being left underground: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Vietnam. Of these, 11 are BRICS members, partners and invitees. The London Overseas Development Institute named China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the main forces preventing even mention of a fossil fuel phase-out. The Financial Times reported that UN Secretary General António Guterres singled out the Saudis for most of the wrecking blame. https://www.g20frombelow.org/article30.php