Critics of Trump's denialism are focusing their political speeches at COP30

Barcelona"That will be the COP of truth, where we will see if we heed the warnings of science and turn them into change." That is how he defined the COP30, the UN climate summit The summit, which kicks off next Monday in Belém, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, will be opened by Brazilian President and host Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This year, the speeches by political leaders have been moved up a few days from the start of the summit due to the logistical challenges of accommodating so many government delegations in a small Amazonian town. In their speeches, both Lula and UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that this summit—which comes exactly ten years after the Paris Agreement—must finally launch the implementation of that agreement, after a decade of negotiating its rules and fine print. Lula acknowledged that the fight against the climate crisis is currently threatened by "an international scenario in which mutual distrust prevails and private interests take precedence over the common good of the world." A scenario, he said, in which "extremist forces fabricate fake news for political gain." The Brazilian president didn't mention Donald Trump by name, but it was clear who he was referring to. The next speaker, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, was more explicit and directly denounced Donald Trump's "lies" when he says the climate crisis is a hoax, as he did at the UN General Assembly in September. The intervention of Colombian President Gustavo Petro followed the same line, and he was the harshest critic of the US president. In fact, Petro used his climate speech to also denounceTrump administration's actions in the Caribbean and the Pacific "with extrajudicial killings" against alleged drug traffickers. "Donald Trump is against humanity, and his absence today is proof of that," he said. The Colombian president stressed that the world is on the verge of "climate collapse" and that part of the responsibility for this lies with "Trump's conduct," with his "denial of science, which is leading his society, with its eyes fixed on the abyss, and with it, all of humanity."

Shortly afterward, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed Lula's lead and avoided mentioning any other political leader by name, but he did admit that "the consensus [that forged the Paris Agreement ten years ago] has ended, and now there are those who argue that it is not time to act." In response, he said, the United Kingdom "will redouble its efforts against the climate crisis."

"There is no place that shows the cost of the climate crisis more clearly than this very place, the Amazon," said Lula, who emphasized that the indigenous peoples of this ecosystem, who struggle every day to keep it alive, "are asking themselves today what the rest of the world is doing to help them." Lula called on the leaders gathered in Brazil this Thursday to push for real action to "move the world away from fossil fuels and stop deforestation." "Fighting climate change should be at the heart of every decision made by every country and every person in the world," said Lula, but he acknowledged the significant disconnect that currently exists between "the global geopolitical context" and the climate emergency.

"Implement, baby, implement"

António Guterres also called on world leaders to accelerate the fight against the climate emergency and warned that there are still "too many" political leaders in the world who are "held hostage" by the fossil fuel industry. "Too many corporations are reaping record profits from climate devastation. Too many leaders remain hostages to fossil fuel interests," he said. "We have failed to ensure that we stay below 1.5°C" as called for in the Paris Agreement, Guterres admitted, and reminded everyone that this threshold is projected to be exceeded "at the latest in the early 2030s." But even so, he urged world leaders "not to give up" on this goal, since scientists say it is still possible that after exceeding 1.5°C, global temperatures could fall again if the right measures are taken. And that is why Guterres has also insisted on urging the assembled governments to get down to work on the "implementation, implementation, and implementation" of the Paris Agreement. Not doing so, he said, would be "a moral failure and a fatal negligence." Laurent Fabius, who was French Foreign Minister during COP21, which approved the Paris Agreement in 2015, also spoke at the start of the summit. Fabius brought to Belém the gavel shaped like a green leaf that he used ten years ago to seal that pact in the French capital. Fabius stressed that COP30 must be "the implementation summit," when measures to apply the agreement are finally put in place. The last ten years have been used to negotiate the rules and the fine print of the Paris Agreement, and now the time has come to "implement." baby"Implement," Fabius said, using the expression that US President Donald Trump uses to talk about resuming drilling for gas and oil (drill, baby, drill).