COP30 and the decline of the global climate protests
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2025 12:22 am
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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."
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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”
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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."
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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”
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
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.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯