COP30 will close with a political text without mentioning fossil fuels phase-out. It does not mention fossil fuel phase-down. It does not provide a pathway to end deforestation. It does not mention the very causes of the crisis. Nothing. Zero. Silence.
So summarized climate activist Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez in the wake of the just concluded United Nations’ climate conference in Belém, Brazil. And what has been accomplished after thirty such annual confabs, each involving almost all global governments and tens of thousands of participants? The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 has expired, and the 2015 Paris Agreement is in disarray. This leaves good times and rent-seeking for what The Guardian called “a jamboree of well-paid lobbyists and officials.”
The post-COP30 narrative of the climate activists is split between the realists and the hangers-on. The realists admit that the latest UN climate conference was a bust, with aspirations for future emission reductions, not only tangible reductions to date, being insufficient.
The UN climate club holds out hope to justify more studies and conferences. “COP30 showed that climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a livable planet, with a firm resolve to keep 1.5C °C within reach,” the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary stated. “I’m not saying we’re winning the climate fight. But we are undeniably still in it, and we are fighting back.”
“For all its flaws, Cop has reaffirmed the belief of the vast majority of the world in this ideal,” opined Ed Miliband, the UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero. But changing politics might cancel Miliband’s intransigence sooner than later.
Livelihood preservation requires manufacturing hope for countless NGOs, academics, and self-styled experts. What would these activists do well in a consumer-driven economy without political favor? New skills would be required to be resource-creating rather than counterproductive.
As a last resort, Al Gore pins progress outside of COP: “Countries, companies, cities, and states worldwide are moving forward to … cultivate and achieve the level of action necessary to fulfill the promise the world made to future generations under the Paris Agreement.” But the tide is turning in these sectors also — and for the same reasons.
Conclusion
Reality bats last, and energy is no exception. Despite the best efforts of the government at home and abroad, the inherent advantages of stock-versus-flow energies are driving climate politics toward consumers and human betterment.
The “COP of Truth” and “Implementation COP” were anything but for climate campaigners. The chimera of a “just, equitable, fossil-free future” is politically lifeless. The “energy transition” (really energy duplication) is all but dead.
Affordability is in, Net Zero out. Under any scenario, free-market climate adaptation is the order of the day, which requires affordable, reliable, plentiful, dense energy, not dilute, intermittent, fragile, and land-and-transition-intensive renewables.
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