The rainforest is burning, and the air in Belém feels heavier than humidity. COP30 opened not with hope, but with exhaustion disguised as ceremony. The speeches circle the same words “implementation,” “adaptation,” “finance”, as if repeating them makes them true. Ten years after Paris, the planet is hotter, the oceans are angrier, and the promises are still paper.
André Corrêa do Lago took the gavel as the new COP President looking more nervous than triumphant. Brazil calls this “the COP of Truth.” That truth is ugly. Every major polluter arrived with the same talking points, wrapped in recycled pledges. Multilateralism is now a ritual, not a force. They stand on stages thanking each other for “ambition” while emissions climb.
Lula spoke with the conviction of a man who’s been here too many times. He called climate change “a tragedy of the present” and said it costs less to fund the planet than to fund war. He’s right, but the room clapped like they were watching a theater piece. Outside, the people of Pará were already paying the price of that tragedy with floods, fires, and hunger.
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, didn’t mince words. “Fight the crisis, not each other,” he said. It was the kind of line meant for headlines, but it landed with the weight of desperation. Everyone knows the math. We’re on track to blow past 1.5°C. Every new deal is a bandage over an open wound that’s bleeding faster than ever.
This year’s obsession is “implementation.” The Baku Finance Goal set $300 billion a year by 2035. Now, donors are being reminded of their invoice. It sounds bold until you remember how many times they’ve promised before. Climate finance has become the diplomatic version of an IOU vague, delayed, and always conditional.
Belém, the symbolic heart of the Amazon, was supposed to make this summit different. Lula wanted the world to see the forest not as a myth, but as a home. Yet even here, the contradictions breathe louder than the speeches. Private jets parked beside posters about sustainability. Delegates lectured on fossil fuel phaseouts while wearing lanyards sponsored by oil giants.
Brazil has given COP30 theater and substance at once. The rhetoric is grand. The stage is green. But the truth sits behind the applause: we are running out of time, and out of honesty.
What happens next won’t be decided in Belém’s plenary hall, but in how seriously the world takes the invoices, the floods, and the lives already lost. COP30 can brand itself “the COP of Truth,” but truth without action is just performance. The Amazon doesn’t need poetry. It needs survival.
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