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Amid U.S. Boycott of COP30 Climate Summit, UN Grabs More Power
By Alex Newman
BELÉM, BRAZIL — Rumors of the global “climate” regime’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. While U.S. President Donald Trump’s boycott of the United Nations COP30 climate summit knocked some of the wind out of the global-warming movement’s sails this year, schemes to undermine national sovereignty, individual liberty, and Western economic prosperity still advanced in a major way. The globalist plan is to simply keep moving, mostly under the radar, and wait out Trump’s final term.
Under the guise of climate “adaptation,” the final agreement included a call for tripling the amount of wealth redistributed from taxpayers in wealthier nations to kleptocrats in poorer ones. All governments aside from the United States also renewed their total commitment to the Paris Accord and the broader UN fight against CO2 emissions, which the UN claims drive warming. And a new set of “global indicators” to “track progress” on “climate” was enshrined into this year’s deal, too.
Significant Progress
However, much of the most significant “progress” at this year’s summit took the form of supplemental agreements approved by coalitions of governments outside the formal Conference of the Parties (COP) system. Everything from full-blown censorship of “misinformation” to globalizing “carbon markets” and “phasing out fossil fuels” was enshrined in separate deals. These deals brought together informal groupings of governments and dictatorships anxious to move faster than the rest.
Much of the sparse U.S. press and most of the tax-funded “Rent-a-Mob” Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) portrayed the summit as essentially a failure. Their argument was simple: the “climate crisis” is so serious and so severe that only a much more rapid shift away from hydrocarbon (“fossil fuel”) energy and into global “carbon markets” to charge people for their emissions of CO2 will suffice in saving “Mother Earth.”
The COP30 did take baby steps in that direction. But with Trump ridiculing the “hoax” and even suggesting those involved in the climate “conspiracy” may be prosecuted while even alarmist billionaire Bill Gates toned down the hysteria, the “progress” made was not “enough” for those seeking faster empowerment of the UN’s climate regime. This same general argument is made every year — even when the summit takes a giant leap forward.
Global “Mutirão” Deal: CO2 Must Go
The final agreement is bold. In addition to demanding $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, the deal — dubbed the global “Mutirão,” an indigenous term for cooperation — repeatedly touts globalism and even “the critical role of multilateralism based on United Nations values and principles.” Over and over again, the agreement celebrates the “centrality of international cooperation” in battling the supposed threat of alleged man-made global warming.
Perhaps even more concerning is the discussion of the UN-backed “carbon budget.” The deal claims humans have already emitted four fifths of the allowable budget. That means under this vision, the UN and its members will eventually have to forcibly limit human activity that releases CO2 under the guise of stopping temperature changes. Indeed, the deal calls for “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Of course, every human activity including breathing releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, human emissions of CO2 — known to serious scientists as the “gas of life” — represent a fraction of one percent of all the greenhouse gases present naturally in the atmosphere. Leading scientists such as Dr. William Happer, who served as Trump’s climate advisor during his first term, have told The New American that more CO2 would be good for the world.
From Goals to “Action”
In a little-noticed but highly consequential section of the COP30 agreement, negotiators quietly advanced what critics warn is a blueprint for expanded global governance under the banner of “implementation.” Beyond the headline promises, the final deal locks nations into an intricate web of 59 new “global adaptation indicators,” mandatory reporting cycles, gender-based “climate assessments,” and cross-border monitoring frameworks designed to measure compliance with future climate obligations.
Taken together, these mechanisms shift the UN process from aspirational goal-setting into a far more intrusive evaluation and enforcement phase. Over time, these schemes could empower UN agencies, development banks, and transnational climate bodies to collect data, rate national performance, and even shape domestic policy through funding conditions and “technical assistance.”
By embedding these standardized metrics into national government’s planning, the final COP30 deal effectively builds the scaffolding for a permanent international oversight regime. For now, the actual “emission” targets and finance pledges remain relatively vague and non-specific. But there is always next year’s COP, or the one after that, or even one after Trump leaves office.
It is true that the deal avoided explicit language directly attacking national sovereignty. But according to critics, the architecture demanded in the COP30 deal full of indicators, reporting tools, and “capacity-building” programs will give international bureaucrats unprecedented leverage over how nations allocate resources, regulate energy, and govern their own economies.
UN Bosses & Alarmists Celebrate U.S. Absence
Many UN officials celebrated the fact that the U.S. government was not there to act as a roadblock on “consensus.” Former UN Climate Czarina Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the creation of the Paris Accord in 2015 and opened the COP in Cancun with a prayer to the Mayan goddess of cannibalism and war, was among those glad to see the Trump administration missing. “I actually think it is a good thing,” she said, arguing that the U.S. government would seek to “obstruct progress.”
Leading activist and legal operative Jean Su with the Center for Biological Diversity — an extremely well-funded outfit peddling climate hysteria and global “solutions” — expressed similar sentiments on a panel during COP30. Claiming American states and “every single community” in the United States would use UN agreements coming out of COP30 and future COPs as a “North Star” to save the planet, Su argued that the U.S. would ultimately be bound by whatever the UN decides once Trump leaves office anyway.
“The US is not here this year, which means that they cannot stop this roadmap in its tracks here,” argued Su, echoing comments by other leading figures at the summit as the U.S. government has not yet withdrawn from the UNFCCC. “Once the Trump administration leaves, the United States administration is then obliged to meet that roadmap. And if that takes 3 years for them to come back in, that is a win as well.”
Unfortunately for those hoping for better news, Su may be right. As leading climate skeptic Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com told The New American in an interview, as long as the U.S. government remains a party to the UNFCCC, legal analysts argue that the next administration can simply re-join Paris and other agreements negotiated under the primary 1992 treaty.
UN Bosses Celebrate Progress
They were right to celebrate. Despite the whining from the NGO choir, totalitarian governments seeking loot, and the alarmist media, even leading UN officials were celebrating the progress they made. It was not as much “progress” and “ambition” as the alarmists and the powerful forces behind them would have liked — especially when considering that the end goal is “global governance,” a planetary technocratic economic regime, and even a uniting of the world’s religions. But it was still “progress” for the agenda.
“COP30 showed that climate cooperation is alive and kicking,” declared UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell during his final remarks at the summit after the adoption of the deal. “Keeping humanity in the fight for a livable planet. And that’s despite roaring political headwinds. While one country stepped back, 194 countries have stood firm in solidarity — rock-solid in support of climate cooperation.”
“The direction of travel is clear: the shift from fossil fuels to renewables and resilience is unstoppable, and it’s gathering pace,” continued Stiell, the chief UN official in charge of shepherding the annual “climate” negotiations that continue building upon the underlying 1992 UNFCCC treaty. “We reached unanimous agreement on key agenda items: Just transition, gender, and the tripling of adaptation finance.”
Stiell pointed to multiple provisions of the final agreement that he said proved his point. For instance, in Paragraph 10, governments unanimously agreed that “the global transition towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible and the trend of the future.” In paragraph 15, governments reiterated their support for previous agreements, including the COP28 language on moving away from “fossil fuels.”
Private Sector Involvement
They also made clear that this was not simply a mission for governments: the private sector must be involved, too. As Steill pointed out in his remarks, all of the UN member states present at the COP30 agreed in paragraph 29 that “all actors” must “work together to significantly accelerate and scale up climate action worldwide.” And as soon as Trump leaves office, they fully intend to put the pedal back to the metal.
“We must go further and faster,” Stiell continued as he assured climate dignitaries, alarmist media outlets, and activists that, despite the setbacks this year, there was more to come and nothing could stop it. “Our direction is clear: the shift from fossil fuels to renewables and resilience is unstoppable.… We’re building — day by day, step by step, COP by COP — a better world. For billions more people, in every part of the world.”
Big Side Deal: Globalizing Carbon Markets
In addition to the final deal adopted by consensus, dozens of governments joined forces on an ad hoc basis to advance the climate agenda. One the most important but least noticed announcements in the United States involves the merger of various major “carbon markets” into a single international system to cap the amount of CO2 that can be emitted and then trade “carbon credits.” Indeed, the Marxist-led Brazilian government and the European Union created the “Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets” to do just that. The regime ruling Communist China is also an enthusiastic proponent.
EU “President” Ursula von der Leyen explained the significance of the move in a statement praising the new alliance with the regime in Brazil. “Carbon pricing has become a central tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with a strong business case for the economy and for the people,” she said. “I am happy to confirm the support of the European Union to the Declaration on the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Market. We want to work closely with Brazil and with many like-minded partners on putting a price on carbon.”
Calling on all other governments to integrate their own so-called “carbon markets” over time, the agreement touted the “important role of carbon markets as one of the drivers of climate action.” The deal commits the governments involved to work together on “carbon pricing mechanisms,” “Monitoring, Reporting and Verification systems,” and “carbon accounting methodologies.”
Important Revenue Stream
The Marxist would-be despot ruling Brazil, whose regime staged a phony “coup” against itself and imprisoned its leading political opponent as the COP was coming to a close, boasted of the possibilities for extracting more wealth from people. “Carbon markets can become important sources of public revenue,” he said, as if more money for government was necessarily and unquestionably a good thing. “But,” he added, “they will only gain scale if countries move towards common parameters.”
If and when the system goes global and ensnares the United States, each American would have to pay for CO2 emissions. Whether breathing would be exempt was not immediately clear, but virtually everything else would fall under the scheme. The regimes ruling Russia, China, Brazil, South Africa, and even India are all moving in that direction. So is California and various other Democrat-led states. Eventually, globalists and communists fully expect the United States to be ensnared, too.
Transition Away From Fossil Fuels and Free Speech
Other key agreements negotiated outside the formal structure took aim at free speech and fossil fuels. While tyrants of various varieties were hoping to secure universal agreement and “consensus” to get the schemes into the final deal, they were forced by practical realities to get the most extreme elements into side agreements.
After it became clear that some governments emboldened by Trump would not support more language calling for an end to fossil fuels, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, the COP boss from Brazil, announced a separate deal on the issue. The scheme, which managed to get almost half of the UN’s members onboard, created “a working group.” As part of that, the Marxist-leaning government of Colombia and the Dutch government will co-host the first “Global Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Conference” summit next year.
Obviously the delegates attending the summit will get to it using fossil fuels. Ironically, as the delegates were haggling over the phase out of “fossil fuels,” a fire broke out at the summit. Thankfully for all in attendance, “fossil fuels” were plentiful and available to allow fire trucks to arrive and create the chemicals needed to put out the flames.
Another agreement on the sidelines of the COP targeted speech. As reported by The New American magazine contributor Andrew Muller, who also attended the summit, the governments of key U.S. allies including Germany, France, Canada, and Belgium were among those that signed the “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change.” That deal aims to foster more international cooperation in the war on those who question not just the “science,” but also the “solutions,” as key UN officials put it at the summit.
Indoctrination Also Key
Also key to advancing the global “climate” agenda will be the “education” of children not just to “understand” climate change, but to “take action.” Indeed, bombarding children worldwide with a non-stop deluge of “climate change education” will be essential to saving the planet from the alleged dangers of carbon dioxide, according to key UN “education” officials at the summit. Weaponizing children must be at “the heart” of it all, UN functionaries declared.
“Education is one of the most powerful tools in the global efforts to address the climate crisis,” argued UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini, one of several senior UN bureaucrats leading the charge at COP30. “We must ensure that every learner is equipped not only to understand the challenges but also to take action as part of the transition to a greener more sustainable society.”
Educators worldwide are supposedly all on board — all they need now is more money! Education International, a global alliance of teachers’ unions, is one of the key players in the effort to globalize climate indoctrination. As a major force behind the UN’s “Greening Education Partnership” alongside UNESCO, EI is one of many voices seeking to dramatically and quickly accelerate the indoctrination of children. And during the COP30, they did not even try to hide it.
“As we rise to protect our planet and our homes, education must stand at the center of our struggle,” claimed Education International President Mugwena Malulke, demanding that “education” be used to lead children and humanity into what he called the “just green economy.” “The Earth deserves that hope. At COP30, educators call on every government to place education on the frontline.”
Critics Celebrate, Too
While there was plenty for supporters of sovereignty, liberty, and common sense to be concerned about, the outcome could have been far worse. Among those celebrating the defeat of many of the most extreme proposals was Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) chief Craig Rucker, who attended the COP30 and has been attending UN climate summits for many years. But like other critics, he called for the United States to completely pull the plug on the whole UN “climate” process.
“The so-called collapse of the COP30 negotiations is welcome news to American taxpayers and those in the pro-liberty movement,” Rucker told The New American. “Not only did the globalist climate radicals fail to get the nations attending this gathering to agree on eliminating fossil fuels, but they also took a huge step backwards from where they were last year as every mention of fossil fuels was stricken from the meeting’s “Global Mutirão” outcome document.”
“The UN’s inability to get governments fully committed to their radical climate agenda, especially after 30 years of trying, exposes how these bloated UN climate circuses are ineffective theater that prioritizes photo-ops over substance,” he argued. “American taxpayers have long been fleeced to fund vague promises from nations like China that continue polluting unchecked — and not CO2. It’s high time we reject these sovereignty-sapping deals that would hamstring our energy sector and drive up costs for working families.”
Conclusion
The globalists, communists, and other subversive forces behind the alarmist movement clearly did not get everything they hoped for out of the COP30. But they still made progress. And the dangerous agenda to undermine national sovereignty, the free market, Western economies, and individual liberty remains a major threat. The plan is simply to wait for Trump to leave office and then get right back to it.
However, Americans, most of whom say in surveys they reject the hypothesis that human emissions are causing global warming, are not helpless spectators. There are critical steps that can and must be taken. On his own, Trump could deal a devastating blow to it by withdrawing from the UNFCCC. But on an even broader level, Congress could withdraw from the entire UN with the DEFUND Act. With liberty at stake, Americans must get involved.
Published with permission of thenewamerican.com