COP30: Another Failed Climate Junket

The 30th UN Climate Summit has come and gone, and the many private jets have returned from Brazil having accomplished nothing new. What we saw for two weeks of COP30 was the same, old, doomsday prophecies. “World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds,” blared one headline from The Guardian, while another declared “Missing 1.5C climate target is a moral failure, UN chief tells Cop30 summit.”

With three decades of fear-mongering, there is value to look at some highlights.

COP30 highlights – or lowlights

A 2004 article from The Guardian excoriated the Bush Administration for trying to bury a scientific climate study. The breathless article did not want for climate hyperbole:  “Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.” 

Sitting here above water in 2025, it doesn’t require an advanced degree in climatology to know that report is off. 

Yet a search for a follow up to that report was less fruitful. There is no revisiting the work 20 plus years later to determine wherein lied the error. Of course, scientists make mistakes, and that is precisely why declaring “the science is settled” is deeply unscientific. New information, new data, new findings arise altering the body of evidence and drawing new conclusions. 

In climate science, one can cry wolf incorrectly for decades and there simply are no repercussions.   

Keep calm, and climate on. For 30 years, even.   

Buckingham Palace’s social media team released another blast from the incorrect climate past: a 1994 video of King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, predicting catastrophe. Featuring appearances from A-list actors like Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, the video is completely wrong. His speech is so old that Charles was still married to Diana.

“As our planet’s life support system begins to fail,” declares Hollywood icon Glenn Close, echoing the royal words ,“and our very survival as a species is brought into question…” One can only marvel at the complete lack of self-awareness.

Earth’s life support system failing? Seriously?

Our planet’s life support has never “failed” or even begun to fail. The only ones questioning our very survival as a species are the COP summit fools, and they have been doing so for decades now. 

Every climate crusader paints a doomsday scenario. Greta Thunberg, while she was still a climate activist and not part of the more en vogue “death to Israel” crowd, suggested climate change “will wipe out all humanity.”  In 2009, former Biden Climate Czar John Kerry predicted the, “Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013.” Former Vice President Al Gore was rebuked by a British high court judge for a litany of errors in his 20-year-old climate film “An Inconvenient Truth.”  

In 2023, His Majesty launched a “countdown clock” ticking down to 2030 as “a visual reminder of the urgency of the climate crisis.” 

Sadly, it looks like the fall of Britain will happen sooner from soaring energy prices. 

Throughout it all, the common threads of these messages were willful and deliberate hyperbole without any after action, explanation or showing of the work.  

Keep calm and climate on. 

The logistics of COP30 betray its hypocrisy

More than 55,000 people attended this year’s climate summit, and apparently, none of them have Zoom or Teams. Could not the entire thing be virtual to reduce the carbon footprint? Who is paying for all of this?  Prince William attended, and we presume the British taxpayers footed his bill. In fact, the UK sent over 200 people to COP30 racking up over 2.3million total miles with delegates staying a hotel costing £1,250 a night. The UK’s Climate Change Minister’s Ed Miliband didn’t just make the 12,000 mile trip once, but twice.   

Remarkable luxury for a crisis, repeated year after year, resort after resort, demanding we “act now” and “achieve net zero.” The same boring predictions, the same silly prophesizing, the same doom and gloom meant to scare us into submission. We are all sick of it.

COP30 accomplished nothing. The agenda, the language, the hand-wringing has gone from alarmist to laughable. Some 30 years of it is now exhausting.   

There is one bright spot at COP30. This naysaying crowd which looks at the future with panic and fear has one thing on the horizon which can assuage their fears and give them hope: COP31!   

See you next year.  

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.