We can all see real-time evidence that the planet is heating with extreme weather now part of the daily news cycle. Into this urgency marches COP30, the United Nations climate summit held in Belém, Brazil.

This summit was billed as historic, the first major climate conference to be staged in the Amazon, the very lungs of the Earth. Its organisers promised that it will be “the COP of the people,” a turning point for genuine climate justice. But to many observers, activists and even delegates the reality looks far less inspiring.

Green stage, brown footprints

The first irony lies in the event itself. To host COP30, Belém, a tropical city on the fringes of the Amazon rainforest embarked on an infrastructure overhaul involving new hotels, highways and upgraded airports. On paper, this looks like progress. In practice, environmentalists are alarmed that road expansions and construction projects are already threatening protected rainforest zones.

Forest clearance near COP specific development sites, contradict the summit’s stated mission of protecting the Amazon. Meanwhile, thousands of delegates and journalists will fly in from every corner of the globe, generating an enormous carbon footprint.

This contradiction equates to a climate summit that itself emits as much carbon as a small nation! In the symbolic heart of the Amazon, all this feels especially absurd.

The price of participation

For all its rhetoric about inclusivity, COP30 risks excluding the very voices it most needs to hear. Hotel and rental prices in Belém have reportedly risen 500%. This has priced out small delegations who represent the populations who are most at risk from environmental catastrophes.

The result? A summit of the rich and the well-connected. Precisely those least affected by the floods, the droughts and the fires that regularly ravage poorer nations. A climate conference where developing countries cannot afford to attend is surely a moral contradiction?

If the process is to mean anything, it must surely embody fairness, not only in its outcomes but also in its access. Instead, COP30 threatens to become an echo chamber of privilege, with corporate lobbyists and government delegations filling the space vacated by those who simply cannot afford to pay.

Decades of talk with little by way of action

Thirty conferences on, the problem is not simply about logistics, it is structural. Since the first COP in Berlin in 1995, global emissions have continued to rise almost every year. The Paris Agreement of 2015 promised a new era of accountability, yet even today most countries are failing to meet their own national targets let alone adhere to anything agreed at these lavish COP talking shops.

According to the UN, the world is on track for warming of between 2.7°C and 3°C this century. That means the cherished 1.5 °C goal set in Paris is effectively dead and buried. So what’s being achieved?

Again, what will COP30 achieve? Most likely, another round of well-phrased communiqués, another set of voluntary “pledges” without any enforcement or credibility.

Corporate capture instead of carbon capture

Behind the polite language of diplomacy lies another uncomfortable truth. That's the growing influence of the fossil-fuel lobby within the climate process. Last year’s COP meeting in Dubai saw record numbers of oil and gas delegates.

Brazil itself, though rich in renewable potential, is also expanding offshore oil production. The host nation thus finds itself in a moral double bind, by preaching climate leadership whilst pursuing fossil expansion. Similar contradictions abound.

So. The optics are corrosive. A case of “do as we say, not as we do.” The more the COPs are infiltrated by vested interests, the less credibility they retain.

Tired symbolism

Belém was chosen as the host city for its powerful symbolism; the gateway to the Amazon. But the symbolism became a shield for inaction. Local communities and Indigenous leaders have complained that they were not meaningfully consulted in the planning or agenda-setting for the summit.

Even the infrastructure projects touted as having “legacy benefits” for the region have sparked controversy. One proposed highway expansion near the city reportedly cuts through a conservation corridor, threatening wildlife and carbon-rich ecosystems.

To critics, the Amazonian backdrop was nothing more than a scenic stage. A lavish photo opportunity for world leaders, rather than a place of genuine empowerment for the people who protect it on a daily basis.

Smoke and mirrors

COP30’s outcome was front-loaded with familiar phrases: “renewed commitments,” “strengthened ambition,” “accelerated pathways.” These sound impressive but usually translate to vague promises with few tangible benefits.

The most optimistic scenario, according to policy analysts, is that COP30 might secure minor progress on the ‘Loss and Damage Fund’ which is a financial mechanism designed to compensate vulnerable nations. But even that faces resistance from wealthier countries who are unwilling to commit substantial sums.

If all this latest summit produces is soft language, deferred deadlines and unenforceable pledges, then it will confirm what many of us already suspect: that the COP process has never really been anything more than a ritual of repetition. A kind of annual group therapy session for governments that are unwilling or unable to change.

Glaring moral failures

In the end, what makes COP30 a farce is not only the hypocrisy or the inefficiency, it's the erosion of moral seriousness.

The science is unequivocal, whilst the technologies required to decarbonise already exist. What’s missing is political courage; the will to confront entrenched interests, to gradually phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, to reimagine economies around sustainability rather than continued extraction of finite resources.

Yet instead of urgency, we get platitudes. Instead of leadership, we get logistics. Meanwhile, the planet burns, floods and starves while leaders queue for selfies at summits that resemble luxury conventions more than emergency meetings.

Beyond the theatrics

It’s easy to hail these COP conferences as a stage for necessary diplomacy, slow but cumulative. And yes, the COPs have occasionally yielded some degree of incremental progress. The Paris Agreement itself was born from one. But after thirty iterations, with the carbon clock ticking louder than ever, incrementalism feels more like excuses.

If COPs are to have any meaning, delegations must break the cycle of symbolic politics. That means fewer press releases and more enforcement; fewer fossil-fuel sponsors and more binding commitments. Above all, it means recognising that the plight of the natural world is real. It's counting down in real time, whilst the great and the good eat smoked salmon and gaze at all the pretty little monkeys whose actual existence is gravely impacted by their collective inaction.

A farce the world can ill-afford

To call COP30 a farce is not cynicism, it’s realism. A gathering that excludes the vulnerable, pollutes the planet, indulges corporate influence and produces nothing enforceable surely cannot be taken seriously.

The Amazon, with its deep green canopy and fragile beauty, deserved a moment of genuine redemption; a summit that lived up to its surroundings. Instead, it became the stage for idle virtue signalling and yet more pointless declarations of intent.