The thirtieth edition of COP – the global climate conference designed to bring world leaders together to discuss sustainability and unite countries under one global climate action – began in Brazil in early November. The event aims to highlight issues that threaten the future of the planet – greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, ecologically destructive actors – and pave the way towards net zero. But just how sustainable is the conference itself?
Cutting Takes’ anonymous source, who worked at various COP events at the recent conference, offered an inside perspective that does not feature in mainstream media coverage to supplement this piece.
Right outside the climate conference, our source spotted a scene straight out of an environmental campaign advertisement – a turtle, surrounded by plastic waste, swimming in polluted waters. It is an image that has been ingrained into the minds of most modern-day individuals as damning proof of our environmental negligence. While you might expect examples like this to be provided by one of the leaders in attendance to illustrate the severity of the climate crisis and appeal to the emotions of those in attendance, the reality is that this was less than 200 metres away from one of the COP venues by our anonymous source.
The staggering extent of Brazil’s ecological destruction is well-documented and provides good justification for holding COP30 there. It makes sense to attempt to raise awareness about anthropogenic climate change in a country that accounts for over 40% of global deforestation. But this proximity of this scene to the event itself is a physical representation of the seedy underbelly that lurks under the well-meaning visage of the conference. Indeed, “heavy security screening” shielded attendees and staff members from “the poor state of the ocean right on their doorstep,” quite literally allowing them to easily overlook the problem instead of addressing it.
This edition of COP has been particularly controversial in terms of self-defeating actions. The event organisers have been shooting themselves in the foot right from the outset, clearing a 13-kilometre-long stretch of forest to facilitate access to the city of Belém. Felling tens of thousands of acres of the Amazon, destroying livelihoods and biodiversity in the process, is a direct contradiction of everything that COP30 purports to stand for. In the lead up to the event, the Brazilian Minister of the Environment and Climate Change was keen to stress that the conference will be a landmark occasion for Brazil: “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon.” Fate, it seems, has twisted his words and made the scale of ecological destruction in the world’s biggest rainforest painfully obvious. Even with more evidence of anthropogenic climate change than ever before, it seems as though elites are still buying into the Kantian fantasy of nature as an inexhaustible frontier to be exploited in the name of human progress.
This is not the first time that the host country of COP has come under fire. If you cast your mind back to 2023, you might recall that COP28 was hosted by the United Arab Emirates which recorded the third highest rate of fossil fuel consumption per capita worldwide the following year. Unsurprisingly, speculation swirled about the true intentions of the petrostate and its neighbours, whose economies all hinge on oil extraction and exports. As it turned out, climate activists’ suspicions were well-founded, with the UAE intending to use the occasion to negotiate petroleum deals.
COP30 has likewise been marred by various conflicts of interests and the presence of organisations with dubious motives for attending the event. An investigation by The Guardian and DeSmog, a journalism organisation which aims to clear up the “PR pollution” that is rife in contemporary discussions about climate change, found that over 300 agriculture lobbyists were present at this year’s edition of the climate conference. What’s more, advocates from fossil fuel pressure groups vastly outnumbered delegates from all countries apart from Brazil, indicating that the conferences’ interests have shifted away from global co-operation and towards the appeasement of conglomerates. The presence of these figures representing the industries which cause the most damage in the Amazon, from cattle ranching to pesticides, sparked outrage and protests by indigenous groups who were originally snubbed by the event and turned away by security. By welcoming those who facilitate catastrophic anthropogenic exploitation and suppressing the voices of groups who are directly affected by this havoc, the organisers of COP scuttled their own ostensible aims and ceded to the whims of corporations and bad actors.
Since the protests, questions regarding the function of the security forces at the conference have abounded – are they a genuine peacekeeping force, or a group of thugs looking to exercise state-sanctioned violence at any opportunity? Their conduct at COP30 suggests the latter. Not only did armed soldiers and police officers clash publicly with indigenous groups who were denied accreditation to enter the event, but their general demeanour contributed to a significant “sense of unnerve” amongst attendees and staff members. On one occasion, when a local was walking a dog outside the entrance of the event, a security guard “threw a rock” at the civilian after a brief verbal confrontation between the two.
Once again, at an event designed to promote democratic values like freedom of speech and political participation, it is disappointing to see violence being wielded with such nonchalance in the name of repressing the people whose interests the conference claims to be protecting. Towards the end of COP30, the Brazilian government has created new indigenous territories in response to the courageous dissidence of the protestors – a victory, to be sure, but one tainted by the initial recalcitrance of the conference organisers to recognise this population as political agents, or even people at all. Given that others “couldn’t return to their homes due to military lockdowns” and were anxious about “violent behaviour” continuing long after COP30, world leaders’ and organisers’ accounts of a successful conference are indelibly marked with the looming threat of future skirmishes.
Despite security concerns and the chaos outside the entrance, the event itself was “smoothly run” with a number of major international figures in attendance – though there were some conspicuous absentees. The scale of the conference is certainly impressive, though one has to question whether the guests’ conduct is as sustainable as the message they preach. Indeed, the majority of the 3,000 attendees flew into Brazil to attend COP30, with international leaders using private jets for security reasons. Even some of the Brazilian delegates opted for planes instead of more environmentally friendly modes of transport like public buses or trains.
As humanity edges towards the ecological ‘tipping point’, the accumulation of billions of individual, environmentally damaging decisions, leadership and direction on the subject of climate change is needed more than ever.
Then, there’s the issue of the items that were manufactured especially for this iteration of the conference. The amount of expendable event products was staggering, ranging from custom cups and coasters to bespoke pillows for coffee areas and banners. When asked whether these items were biodegradable or even recyclable, officials responded “mostly no.” When pressed whether there was the possibility of them being re-used at other events, our source was informed that they “all [had] bespoke designs for COP30 and [would] be thrown away post-event.” This constitutes another facet of COP30’s maelstrom of competing interests and ambitions; it is hard to take a global climate conference seriously when it fails to make even the most basic of eco-friendly decisions. When these micro-failures are totted up alongside the more serious faults in Belém, including the aforementioned suppression of indigenous voices and contrasting views on the global road map away from fossil fuel use after nine days of talks, the purpose and relevance of COP becomes harder and harder to discern.
As humanity edges towards the ecological ‘tipping point’, the accumulation of billions of individual, environmentally damaging decisions, leadership and direction on the subject of climate change is needed more than ever. Having attended the event, our source suggested that a “virtual event” would help to combat the ecological negligence that is currently running rampant at the event, but this would not address the existential crisis at the core of COP. As long as it continues to practice undemocratic, violent means of suppressing protests and free speech, as well as turning a blind eye to malevolent lobbyists and consultancy firms, the conference not only fails to meet its purported objectives but also fuels claims that the threat posed by climate change is not as serious as some may think.
Stories like Ed Miliband taking two planes to the conference imply that world leaders are hypocritical and aren’t taking the issue seriously, feeding the idea that it is all a hoax designed to sap the power of large industrial conglomerates. Combined with the scaling back of environmental regulations, especially in the US, and major news organisations pushing patently false narratives about the true scale of anthropogenic climate change and its implications for humanity, COP30’s failure transforms from a bumbling display of incompetence and hypocrisy into something decidedly more sinister.
In the information age, people report feeling confused and, most importantly, powerless as a result of the slurry of overwhelming statistics related to climate change; this often provokes cynicism, flat-out denial or resignation in the face of the crisis. COP is a crucial event, a means of reinvigorating new efforts to combat global warming, proposing innovative solutions caused by a changing climate and bringing people from all over the world together to foster global engagement with this most serious of crises. Following this edition of the conference, it is clear that COP currently does the exact opposite, bolstering disillusionment and conspiracy while denying valid perspectives. If we are to truly tackle the problems climate change catalyses, it is COP that must change first.
This article was written by Cutting Takes Editor-in-Chief Jack Danson with quotes (indicated by inverted commas) from a member of staff at COP30.
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