By Craig Rucker, President, CFACT

November 24, 2025 - Climate campaigners are flying home from Brazil in deep dejection following one of their worst failures ever to exploit a UN climate summit to advance their agendas.

Not only did climate radicals fail to get COP30 to agree to eliminate fossil fuels, every mention of fossil fuels and 1.5 degree climate targets was stricken from the COP's "Global Mutirão" outcome document.  

All the fig leaf campaigners came away with was a call to triple funding for climate "adaptation" and increase funding for "loss and damage." Adaptation is UN-speak for a nation's ability to cope with the impacts of the impending disasters projected by climate computer simulations (that have failed to materialize in reality). Loss and damage is UN-speak for compensation for bad weather experienced by poor nations (that is not caused by you).  

However, even the inclusion of these funding calls represents failure. The COP30 outcome contains no concrete mechanisms to raise and distribute adaptation and loss and damage funds, nor does it contain enforcement mechanisms, revealing these as empty gestures. Similarly the promised "roadmap" for combating deforestation failed to materialize.

Read the COP30 outcome text at CFACT.org.

Members of team climate are wringing their hand and gnashing their teeth in anguish. 

• “This outcome is a failure," said Marlene Achoki of CARE International, "At COP30, billed as the ‘COP of Truth,’ outcomes fall far short. There is no clarity on how much money is channeled to adaptation, where it will come from, its quality, or how progress will be measured." 
• “About eighty countries have put the red line on any mention of fossil fuels in the outcome from this meeting, this UN process, this COP.  Any mention is a red line for them,” said Vanuatu's Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu.
• “COP30’s outcome fails to even acknowledge the stark and devastating neglect of rich, historically-high polluting states to deliver on their loss and damage finance obligations. The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage remains critically underfunded, resulting in a denial of basic human rights," said Sinéad Loughran of the Irish NGO, Trócaire.
• "COP30 does not deliver a plan on how countries will concretely work towards more climate action, socially just and funded climate action," said David Knecht of Fastenaktion Switzerland.
• “The end of COP30 in Belém feels like a ship sailing into a storm and throwing away its compass. No mention of the long-discussed roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels and no progress toward a fair, fully financed phase-out—a bitterly disappointing result," said Susann Scherbarth of Friends of the Earth Germany. 
• “COP30 was presented as the COP of implementation, yet its outcome falls short of 1.5°C science and states’ legal obligations under the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion... It failed to deliver a time-bound fossil fuel phase-out roadmap and increased grant-based public finance," said Erica Martinelli of Generation Climate Europe.
• “COP30 has been one of the most opaque summits in history. The Brazilian presidency has been incapable of moving towards a final, fair decision that would allow progress on climate justice," said Javier Andaluz Prieto, of Spain's Ecologistas en Acción.

Climate activists are showing signs of actually giving up on the UN climate process!

After failing to accomplish anything meaningful after two weeks of negotiations, André Corrêa do Lago tried to save face by concluding COP30 by promising, “I as President of COP 30, will therefore create two road maps, one on halting and diverting deforestation, and another to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The COP presidency's twin "road maps" would take place outside the UN climate regime and would only include willing nations with no mechanisms for implementation or enforcement! 

How's that for toothless?

Colombia announced it would co-host a voluntary conference with the Netherlands on April 28–29, 2026, in Santa Marta, Colombia in which nations can discuss fossil fuel phaseouts and climate finance without the UN.  

Operationally, the summit was a shambles. The host city of Belém was overwhelmed: unfinished highways carved through the rainforest, submerged power cables when it rained, a fire in the UN Blue Zone caused by dodgy wiring, last-minute diesel generators for air-conditioning, and catering that ran out of proper food and resorted to ice cream and mysterious “yellow juice” for dignitaries. 

What would a Socialist government or a UN COP be without incompetence and corruption?

Perhaps the biggest shadow over the entire event was the empty U.S. seat. With President Trump keeping the American delegation home, the traditional whipping boy—and primary ATM—of the climate movement was absent. More importantly, without U.S. diplomatic muscle, there was no one left with enough leverage to pressure holdouts like Saudi Arabia into going along and accepting fossil-fuel phaseout language.