COP30 is the world’s biggest trade show

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The vast majority of the tens of thousands of people attending COP30 are there to sell and buy stuff, including oil, natural gas, and even coal. Climate policy has little to do with it. This is by far the world’s biggest trade show, with almost every country represented. There is nothing else like it.

Pre-registration for COP30 is around 56,000, the second highest in COP history. Total attendance might be 70,000 or more. The press often talks as though all these people are somehow involved in the climate deliberations, but that is wildly false.

The number of actual in-the-building negotiators is likely fewer than a thousand. It is possibly a lot less, as that would be five per country, and some countries only send two or three people. Many countries have several negotiators as negotiations often proceed in multiple simultaneous work groups. So, let’s say it is a thousand.

There are also around a thousand journalists, several thousand activist observers, and likely several thousand conference support staff.

So suppose there are ten thousand people directly involved in the negotiations as doers, helpers, and watchers. What do the other 60,000 or so people do? Well, for a start, many of them man (person?) the endless pavilions, booths, and presentations going on outside the negotiations building. Many others attend this carnival.

Many countries have pavilions. Some, like China’s, are whole buildings. There are also components of countries like states and cities. But then, there are big businesses and multi-national corporations that develop projects in and sell to countries and their components. There are even big financial institutions. The show is enormous.

CFACT’s team in Belém has reported on some of these heavy hitters. See, for example, Peter Murphy’s “COP30: Traversing the UN Green Zone. Corporations and government PR on full display for the Amazon” here.

They also talk to each other, and this is where I am sure many deals get done. Plus, there are lots of people who come just to deal with the people in the show.

On the funny side, a few COPs ago, the UN started asking registrants about their ties to oil and gas companies. There turned out to be well over a thousand per COP, which is as many, or more than, the number of negotiators. I am sure a lot of oil and gas deals get started here. In fact, at COP28, the COP president, himself an oil executive, got yelled at for talking about making such deals.

Countries do business in a lot of areas besides oil and gas, from airplanes to agriculture. It would be fun to assess all the shows for the range of businesses potentially involved.

There is no other get-together in the world even remotely like these COPs. Senior people from most countries and a lot of big businesses all talking to each other around the clock for well over a week. I envision 100,000 elevator pitches.

The number of people here to talk about climate change is probably relatively small, say just 15%. Most are here to see and be seen, to sell and to buy, or at least to start talking about that. This might actually make these otherwise stupid COPs valuable. Imagine that!