“This contradiction between the drive to war and global cooperation to save ourselves from climate breakdown is
becoming ever more stark”
By Paul Atkin, Greener Jobs Alliance
COPs are structurally set up to fall short of what is needed. Decision-making by consensus means that any country has a veto. That means that any agreed global position can go no faster than Saudi Arabia and other petro states will permit, even though the US government, the world’s leading petro state, was very audibly absent.
Hence, there was no agreement to even include the words “fossil fuels” in the declaration, let alone planning a road map away from them. However, the tectonic energy plates are shifting. Even Saudi Arabia, while very keen to maintain its oil exports, is investing massively in solar energy for domestic consumption, and over 60% of countries are already beyond their fossil fuel peak.
The commercial, as well as environmental, logic is becoming remorseless. As Clyde Russel, the Asia commodities and energy columnist for Reuters, put it, “If China can maintain, or even lower prices for its clean-energy products it will be hard for the fossil-fuel exporters to compete.” There is an element of panic in the US about this, with Elon Musk noting ‘Just with solar alone, China can, in 18 months, produce enough solar panels to power all the electricity of the United States’ which underlines the contrary desperation of Trump’s baseless bluster at the UN that green energy is ‘scam that will make your country fail’. The rest of the world knows better…and is moving on.
Future COPs will find themselves in a race between that economic and social tipping point and the environmental tipping points being driven by emissions that are now beginning to plateau, when we need them to come down very fast. This COP, partly because of its failings, nevertheless provided a forum to rehearse and establish coalitions of the willing to move faster and further. Although blocs of more than 80 countries, including major fossil fuel producers like Norway and Brazil, had supported a road map to phase out fossil fuels, and 93 had supported a move to “reverse deforestation,” they were unable to get clear commitments into the main text. But, in response, Colombia and the Netherlands, with the support of other countries, have taken the initiative to convene a phase-out road map global conference this April, indicating a virtuous spiral of accelerated ambition beyond global agreements. Jumping well over the low bar set by the global agreements is vital now, and no one should be allowed to try to limbo dance beneath it.
The agreement to triple development finance by 2030 is welcome but undermined by the concerted retreat from Overseas Development Aid to finance arms spending that is now epidemic in the Global North, as Trump tries to stall its wagons into a tight, selfish, tooled-up circle, fighting to the death as the world burns around us. It was as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met last June in Germany to set the stage for COP30, that Trump pushed NATO countries to increase their military spending. This sucked the air out of discussions to increase public climate financing, a key agenda item in Belém.
This contradiction between the drive to war and global cooperation to save ourselves from climate breakdown is becoming ever more stark and should be a central plank of the upcoming year of trade union climate action.
- Paul Atkin is the editor of the GJA, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter/X.
- This article was originally published by the Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) December 2025 Newsletter – you can read the newsletter in full here.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
