Essay by Eric Worrall
According to reporter Will de Freitas, climate delegates need to suffer personal hardship to interest people in what they are saying.
Cop30 saw important developments amid huge disappointment
Published: November 28, 2025 4.13am AEDT
Will de Freitas
Environment + Energy Editor, UK editionThis roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
Cop30 was never just another UN climate summit. Its setting in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, was a reminder that negotiations now unfold within the crisis they are meant to solve.
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“Without the distraction of the US attempting to ‘burn the house down’ … the conference was able to get on with the business at hand: negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.”
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Meanwhile, Belém’s oppressive heat and humidity was noticeable even in the negotiating rooms: “This catalysed an official complaint from UN climate chief Simon Stiell about the climate conditions in the Cop venue, asking for ‘a clear delivery plan on how temperatures will be brought down within the next 24 hours’. The parallels to the goals of the wider negotiation process were hard to miss.
Stories cut through the noise
The image of climate diplomats wiping sweat from their brows as they struggle to focus in a stuffy room is compelling. And it’s this sort of stuff that often gets people interested.
Until the final few days of Cop30, the biggest stories to emerge from the summit all had a human angle: the floods, an indigenous protest, a fire that briefly evacuated the negotiations.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/cop30-saw-important-developments-amid-huge-disappointment-270712
Sadly the UN has gone soft and opted out of the COP conference suffering delegates theme.
COP31 will be in the comfortable resort town Antalya. In winter in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, with mild late Fall average maximum temperatures in the low 70s, the most delegates will have to endure is rain and greedy taxi drivers. And of course there is the excitement of being a high value target located at a beachside resort which is an easy fast boat day trip from the coast of Syria.
It continues to amaze me how many apparatchiks show up at these things. 50,000 grifters! Any meeting with more than 10 or maybe 20 attendees will bog down in bureaucrats spouting off for the cameras. No one will have any interest in saying anything honest, such as, “Wait a sec, let’s think this over first.”
50,000 of them! How many meetings can they possibly have? 20 per meeting is 2500 meetings. 10 days is 250 a day. If they last 50 minutes and start on the hour, that’s 25 meeting rooms, and can you imagine the toilet rush every hour as the meetings empty out? 50,000 idiots, drinking coffee, even if it’s all men who rush in, unzip, piss in a trough, zip up, and rush out all in a minute, and troughs can handle 10 men at a time, that’s 5000 troughs you need! Even if you stagger the meetings to have six starting times every hour, and not all attendees can accomplish a complete set of fulfilling meetings every day, that’s still 833 troughs.
(ETA: Yeah, the arithmetic is bollixed up and it’s really far worse, because there’d have to be 2500 meeting rooms, not 25. That just shows how it warps my brain.)
My mind cannot comprehend this. I get the crony corruption bit. The logistics are beyond me.
Perhaps a gin and tonic will help?
Caipirinha is a Brazilian cocktail, tasty.
I’ll have to try one. I’m not really a cocktail kind of guy and I guess I don’t know what I’m missing. I just remember that according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Gin and Tonic” is the literally universal drink – every race in the galaxy, no matter how alien and bizarre their language, has a drink name that sounds like “Gin and Tonic”.
What a waste of capital. Imagine if these 50,000 well-educated and remunerated individuals were instead devoted to more efficiently producing goods and services that people actually want and need instead of looking for excuses to leech off of the productive citizenry.
WARNING: Following the money may lead to extremes dissatisfaction with current climate policy
I agree most of the attendees were educated. I would avoid adding “well”. Mal would likely be a bit more accurate.
Ah, but the supported the employment in the red light district! Have to give credit where credit is due. Also the cruise ships made tons of cash.
Maybe they aren’t going to meetings, but just hanging out and schmoozing, if one can indeed schmooze at those. I’m just glad to have nothing to do with it.
Call it 250 country delegations. A SWAG, but go with it. That is 200 people per delegation. Some to carry baggage. Some to carry cameras. Some to lay out the clothes for the elites within each delegation. Some drivers.
Of those 200, how many are actual delegates? 10? 5? 20?
What a waste of money.
The best way to get things in a meeting is to have an odd number of members, and 3 is too many.
It sounds like Will de Freitas was suggesting that the USA caused the fire. 😵💫
That’s pretty crazy even by “climate science” standards.
I think he is saying the fire was good for the conference, because it produced more stories of suffering to engage the attention of ordinary people. Probably wasn’t the USA if that is the case.
So this type of heat and humidity is suddenly extraordinary in a location that lies close to the equator and has never been experienced before the current ‘climate crisis’ began to affect the planet. If so, here’s an suggestion for future COPs so that delegates can avoid the oppressive heat that’s been clouding their judgment at previous meetings. Let them be held in the dead of winter in Siberia, Manchuria, northern North America, northern Scandinavia or maybe even Antarctica. Then we’ll see how much evidence of global warming they can find.
If you need to chose exceptionally hot COP -locations(Sharm El Sheikh, Belem,next Antalya,Addis Abebba) to prove your warming point,
than your believe in AGW must be that of a beachfront property owner.
Make them wear Nomex.
Beachfront property on Hudson Bay would be great. There would need to be a Polar bear warning patrol, though.
No need for that.
According to the Algorholic they went extinct in 2020 as result of increasing their population by 25% .
“negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.””
Pure Bovex… texts and agreements have absolutely ZERO effect on “global warming™”
the idea of… “climate diplomats wiping sweat from their brows as they struggle to focus in a stuffy room is “
totally hilarious.. and absolutely in the “NOBODY CARES” category
““Without the distraction of the US attempting to ‘burn the house down’ “
LOL, didn’t need the US… They managed it all on their own. ! 🙂
Imagine committing a horrible crime by simply not participating(in a scam)
I will admit to some satisfaction seeing them suffer, however minutely. The irony is that this “suffering” is what they wish upon all of us should their agenda be implemented.
I can only imagine how much people have to suffer by taking a look at the massive increase in prostitutes that always comes along with those meetings.
Would it be too much to ask for a few hundred VIPs to meet in my neighborhood next March and help shovel out the driveway? Located in Vermont, the skiing will be just fine!
Only if it is frozen climate change.
Buncha crappola
First of all, they chose a place where high humidity is the norm, not the extreme.
If energy was made abundant and affordable, the technology is quite available to make the indoor environment comfortable anywhere on the planet. (Fossil fuels offer this when supplementing a nuclear baseload.)
There was no reason for anyone to be uncomfortable, unless they might have second thoughts about the miles of rainforest destroyed to build a highway for the elite to have easy access to their affair.
Reminds me of Hanson giving congressional testimony with the HVAC shut down on purpose. Snake oil hawkers, they are.
Or: If you can’t stand the heat, stay away from the Equator.
They can’t fail fast enough for me.
Queue the Talking Heads …………
What a bunch of egotistical carrots.
“…the most delegates will have to endure is rain and greedy taxi drivers. And of course there is the excitement of being a high value target located at a beachside resort which is an easy fast boat day trip from the coast of Syria.”
Thank you. Nicely worded to capture the spirit of their chatter.
The COP30 successfully demonstrated the future being caused by the Climate Syndicate.
It was a preview of the 15 minute cities. Jamming 50,000 people in an area that might reasonably accommodate 1/10th that number. Complete with toilets that do not flush and a fire that required evacuation of thousands.
Consider that a reflection on the proposed “rabbit warrens” needed for the 15 minute city. Everyone in those habitats would have a room with a bed and a community hygiene facility with toilets that do not flush and 15 minute wait times just to get to a sink. And the rooms going for $1000 to $5000 per day (cruise ships provided extra housing). Ok, so the cost is a SWAG (silly wild assed guess).
Then consider the fire. Imagine that in a “rabbit warren” building. The casualties of a fire would be tragic.
Now also consider the heat and humidity complaints. That is prescient of a blackout in which the “rabbit warren” habitats would have no cooling (or heating), not to mention that individual rooms would not have the ability to set a comfortable temperature.
Maybe this is worthy of being a STORY TIP.
How much did the COP30 actually cost?
Let’s see…. 50,000 attendees. Call it $1000 per day for 14 days.
No counting what Brazil contributed for hosting this extravaganza… $700 MILLION spent just for the people to be there and that does not include “entertainment” or transportation and is undoubtably on the low side. $3.5B to $5B would seem more reasonable. What is unclear is if it is Brazilian dollars or US dollars. 1 US$ = 5 R$
Seems they could have cancelled COP30 and commissioned more than a few (est. 175 to 350) WTGs. Given the lodging costs were much more than that (upwards to $5000 per night), quite a few more than just a few.
Such hypocrisy.