Lhe frequently disrupts Donald Trump’s diplomacy, disillusioned Nobel Peace Prize candidate turning the defense department into a war department, invading Caribbean waters, threatening armed intervention against the regime of Nicolas Maduro or the authorities of Abuja, Nigeria, depending on the mood of the moment, but remaining constant. The will to power is one of them, as is climate denial which has become very aggressive. The President of the United States is clearly unaware that these two invariants are proving to be mutually exclusive, as was illustrated at the Conference of the Parties on Climate, COP30, which opened in Belém, Brazil, on Monday November 10.
From an expectations standpoint, the context hardly encourages optimism. Even before Donald Trump returned to office, climate diplomacy was weakened by debilitating short-term impacts and the return of war in Europe, which disrupted the order of priorities there. Therefore, the COP30 negotiations are expected to be complicated and their conclusion, like the previous year, risks disappointing.
But what is at stake in Belem, in geopolitical terms, is the assertion of the direction of the global South. This concept remains criticized because it is undoubtedly better to talk about the “South”, which is not always aligned on everything, as evidenced by the different reality of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), an alternative club that talks a lot without doing anything. These “Southern” countries, however, at least share a rational approach to scientific teachings about global warming and its origins.
In contrast to Donald Trump’s narrow-minded dogmatism, they have also demonstrated pragmatism in responding to the challenges posed by global warming. This is not without contradictions better illustrated by COP30 host country Brazil, which is torn between its president’s environmental beliefs and its extractivist culture.
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