Copyright Los Angeles Times
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva implored nations to reject climate denial and continue the fight global warming, as UN climate negotiations kicked off Monday in Belem, Brazil. Lula’s appeal came at the start of the COP30 conference, where the focus is on doing more to reduce planet-warming pollution, by preserving forests and transitioning to lower-emitting fuels. “COP30 will be the COP of truth. In the year of fake news and misinformation, the obscurantists reject not only scientific evidence, but also the international progress,” Lula told delegates at the two-week summit. “They control algorithms, sow hatred and spread fear. They attack institutions, discredit science and undermine universities,” he said. “Now it is time to impose a new defeat to the denialists.” Deliberations were set to begin in earnest on Monday afternoon in the Amazonian city of Belém, after conference leaders resolved squabbles over what should even be on the table for the talks. Divisions had broken out over a push by small island states who wanted to discuss a response to countries’ latest round of emission-cutting pledges, while Saudi Arabia, India and other nations wanted the agenda to include so-called unilateral trade measures — a thinly veiled reference to the EU’s levy on emissions-intensive imports. The Brazilian presidency hosting the summit solved the agenda fight by deferring it. After omitting the proposed items and agreeing to separate presidential consultations on the issues instead, the conference adopted a formal agenda on Monday morning without public sparring. COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago promised to convene delegates for an update on the process of those consultations Wednesday — potentially setting the stage for a broad cover declaration that folds in some of the issues at the end of the summit. The summit is taking place 10 years after the Paris Agreement ushered in an era of grand ambition and plans to constrain global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But formal country pledges under the accord fall well short of what’s needed and put the world on course to breach the target. “Without the Paris Agreement, the planet would be on track for catastrophic warming of nearly 5 degrees by the end of this century,” Lula said Monday. Now, the world is moving in the right direction, he added, but “at the wrong speed.” A fresh UN assessment of countries’ Paris Agreement commitments — including nearly two dozen that were only recently submitted — showed Monday that if followed, those pledges would propel a 12% decline in greenhouse gas emissions in 2035, compared with 2019 levels. “The emissions curve is being bent downwards,” proclaimed Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The new estimates are “a big deal,” he added, since “every fraction of a degree of heating avoided will save millions of lives and billions of dollars in economic damage.”
