From November 10-21, 2025, Brazil will host COP30 in the Amazonian city of Belém, with tens of thousands of delegates, journalists, civil society, and industry representatives expected to attend the summit. The COP meeting serves as the main decision-making platform for the parties to the UNFCCC and convenes annually, unless determined otherwise. These conferences are designed to assess how well countries are meeting their climate goals and to track each party’s progress toward the overarching objectives of the Convention.  Source: COP30: What to Expect from Fiker Institute, based in Dubai.

What’s On the Agenda

COP30 must do the difficult job of restoring confidence in the process following the disappointment of COP29. In preparation for COP30, the summit’s President, Brazilian Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, released a fourth open letter addressed to all delegates, laying out the Action Agenda for Brazil’s hosting of the conference. Rather than introducing new frameworks or making fresh promises, the Brazilian presidency has signaled a desire to focus on delivering on existing commitments, which amount to approximately 400 pledges made over the last few COPs. The letter identifies six thematic priorities:

♦  accelerating the transition in energy and transport systems;
♦  safeguarding biodiversity;
♦  overhauling agri-food systems;
♦  building climate-resilient cities;
♦  advancing human development; and
♦  unlocking finance and technology.  

What Does perplexity.ai Expect from COP30?

Q: About the IPCC COP30, what failures are likely to occur?

A: The most likely failures at IPCC COP30 will include insufficient financial commitments, lack of ambitious national climate targets, deadlocks in negotiations, and ineffective enforcement of agreed actions.

Persistent Finance Shortfalls

• • Developed countries have repeatedly failed to meet climate finance pledges, particularly the $100 billion per year commitment for developing nations.
  • Weak enforcement means finance promises often remain symbolic, undermining support for vulnerable nations.

Lack of Ambitious Climate Targets

• • Many countries are expected to delay or avoid submitting stronger climate plans (NDCs), threatening global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.
  • Negotiation deadlocks, such as disagreements on monitoring national progress, may stop meaningful advances.

Fragmented and Inadequate Adaptation

• • Adaptation efforts are often incremental, poorly funded, and not well-integrated into broader policy plans, leaving communities at risk.
  • Planning is prioritized over actual implementation, causing delays in urgent climate action.

Continued Fossil Fuel Dependence

• • Global fossil fuel use remains high, with little meaningful reduction, despite decades of negotiations.
  • Major emitting countries may continue to obstruct ambitious global decarbonization agreements.

Weak Enforcement and Accountability

• • With insufficient accountability or sanctions for non-compliance, many countries may not deliver on their climate promises, resulting in fragmented progress.

Inadequate Response to Deforestation and Food Systems

• • COPs have failed to effectively address tropical deforestation and emissions from food systems, both critical for climate adaptation and mitigation.
  • Lack of binding, global treaties against deforestation and food-system emissions is a major gap.

In summary, the most likely failures at COP30 will center on inadequate funding, weak and delayed national commitments, governance gaps, continued reliance on fossil fuels, and the lack of implementation for both mitigation and adaptation pledges.

Q: How could finance pledges fail again at COP30?

A: Finance pledges at COP30 could fail again due to several recurring issues: vague commitments, lack of accountability, limited transparency, under-developed reporting mechanisms, geopolitical tensions, and insufficient mobilization of private capital.

Vague and Non-Binding Commitments

• • Previous COP promises (like the $100 billion annual goal) were not legally enforceable, allowing donor nations to fall short without consequence.
  • Language in COP30 agreements may again lack concrete deadlines, binding obligations, or penalty mechanisms.

Ineffective Accountability and Transparency

• • Tracking finance flows—especially from private sources or indirect support—is technically complex and prone to inconsistent or optimistic reporting.
  • Transparency protocols, such as biennial reports, will not come into effect until 2028, meaning interim pledges may remain unverifiable or inflated.

Geopolitical and Economic Constraints

• • High debt burdens and tough capital markets in both donor and developing countries could limit new investments or redirect funds away from climate action.
  • International tensions, recession fears, or shifts in political priorities may reduce the willingness of major economies to contribute robustly.

Inadequate Mobilization of Private Sector Capital

• • COP30’s ambitious $1.3 trillion annual finance goal relies on mobilizing private investment, but there is chronic uncertainty in how private money will be counted, standardized, and guaranteed for climate impact.
  • Public sector funding alone is insufficient, and incentives for private sector participation remain weak or poorly designed.

Delayed Implementation of New Strategies

• • Key reports and strategies for unlocking climate finance (such as the “Baku to Belém Roadmap”) may not translate into immediate action, leading to a gap between pledges and real monetary flows.
  • Developing countries face challenges in preparing robust project pipelines, which delays the actual disbursement of pledged funds.

In summary, finance pledges at COP30 are at high risk of failing due to weak enforcement, slow implementation of transparency tools, geopolitical uncertainty, untested reliance on private investment, and past tendencies to over-promise and under-deliver.

Background COP Briefing Post

Nine years ago French Mathematicians spoke out prior to COP21 in Paris, and their words provide a rational briefing for COP30 beginning Belém this November. In a nutshell:

Fighting Global Warming is Absurd, Costly and Pointless.

• Absurd because of no reliable evidence that anything unusual is happening in our climate.
• Costly because trillions of dollars are wasted on immature, inefficient technologies that serve only to make cheap, reliable energy expensive and intermittent.
• Pointless because we do not control the weather anyway.

The prestigious Société de Calcul Mathématique (Society for Mathematical Calculation) issued a detailed 195-page White Paper that presents a blistering point-by-point critique of the key dogmas of global warming. The synopsis is blunt and extremely well documented.  Here are extracts from the opening statements of the first three chapters of the SCM White Paper with my bolds and images.

Chapter 1: The crusade is absurd
There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way ‘disturbed.’ It is variable, as it has always been, but rather less so now than during certain periods or geological eras. Modern methods are far from being able to accurately measure the planet‘s global temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or 100 years ago are even less reliable. Concentrations of CO2 vary, as they always have done; the figures that are being released are biased and dishonest. Rising sea levels are a normal phenomenon linked to upthrust buoyancy; they are nothing to do with so-called global warming. As for extreme weather events — they are no more frequent now than they have been in the past. We ourselves have processed the raw data on hurricanes….

Chapter 2: The crusade is costly
Direct aid for industries that are completely unviable (such as photovoltaics and wind turbines) but presented as ‘virtuous’ runs into billions of euros, according to recent reports published by the Cour des Comptes (French Audit Office) in 2013. But the highest cost lies in the principle of ‘energy saving,’ which is presented as especially virtuous. Since no civilization can develop when it is saving energy, ours has stopped developing: France now has more than three million people unemployed — it is the price we have to pay for our virtue….

Chapter 3: The crusade is pointless
Human beings cannot, in any event, change the climate. If we in France were to stop all industrial activity (let’s not talk about our intellectual activity, which ceased long ago), if we were to eradicate all trace of animal life, the composition of the atmosphere would not alter in any measurable, perceptible way. To explain this, let us make a comparison with the rotation of the planet: it is slowing down. To address that, we might be tempted to ask the entire population of China to run in an easterly direction. But, no matter how big China and its population are, this would have no measurable impact on the Earth‘s rotation.

Full text in pdf format is available in English at link below:

The battle against global warming: an absurd, costly and pointless crusade
White Paper drawn up by the Société de Calcul Mathématique SA
(Mathematical Modelling Company, Corp.)

A Second report was published in 2016 entitled: Global Warming and Employment, which analyzes in depth the economic destruction from ill-advised climate change policies.

The two principal themes are that jobs are disappearing and that the destructive forces are embedded in our societies.

Jobs are Disappearing discusses issues such as:

The State is incapable of devising and implementing an industrial policy.

The fundamental absurdity of the concept of sustainable development

Biofuels an especially absurd policy leading to ridiculous taxes and job losses.

EU policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% drives jobs elsewhere while being pointless: the planet has never asked for it, is completely unaware of it, and will never notice it!

The War against the Car and Road Maintenance undercuts economic mobility while destroying transportation sector jobs.

Solar and wind energy are weak, diffuse, and inconsistent, inadequate to power modern civilization.

Food production activities are attacked as being “bad for the planet.”

So-called Green jobs are entirely financed by subsidies.

The Brutalizing Whip discusses the damages to public finances and to social wealth and well-being, including these topics:

Taxes have never been so high

The Government is borrowing more and more

Dilapidated infrastructure

Instead of job creation, Relocations and Losses

The wastefulness associated with the new forms of energy

Return to the economy of an underdeveloped country

What is our predicament?
Four Horsemen are bringing down our societies:

• The Ministry of Ecology (climate and environment);
• Journalists;
• Scientists;
• Corporation Environmentalist Departments.

Steps required to recover from this demise:

• Go back to the basic rules of research.
• Go back to the basic rules of law
• Do not trust international organizations
• Leave the planet alone
• Beware of any premature optimism

Conclusion

The real question is this: how have policymakers managed to make such absurd decisions, to blinker themselves to such a degree, when so many means of scientific investigation are available? The answer is simple: as soon as something is seen as being green, as being good for the planet, all discussion comes to an end and any scientific analysis becomes pointless or counterproductive. The policymakers will not listen to anyone or anything; they take all sorts of hasty, contradictory, damaging and absurd decisions. When will they finally be held to account?

 

Footnote:

The above cartoon image of climate talks includes water rising over politicians’ feet.  But actual observations made in Fiji (presiding over 2017 talks in Bonn) show sea levels are stable (link below).

Fear Not For Fiji

In 2016 SCM issued a report Global Temperatures Available data and critical analysis

It is a valuable description of the temperature metrics and issues regarding climate analysis.   They conclude:

None of the information on global temperatures is of any scientific value, and it should not
be used as a basis for any policy decisions. It is perfectly clear that:

• there are far too few temperature sensors to give us a picture of the planet’s temperature;
• we do not know what such a temperature might mean because nobody has given it
  any specific physical significance;
• the data have been subject to much dissimulation and manipulation. There is a
  clear will not to mention anything that might be reassuring, and to highlight things
  that are presented as worrying;
• despite all this, direct use of the available figures does not indicate any genuine
  trend towards global warming!