The Complete and Utter Failure of COP30
- Paul Watson
- il y a 1 jour
- 5 min de lecture
By Captain Paul Watson
For 30 years, the charade has played out—beginning with COP1 in 1995.
In March 1995, 869 delegates from 160 nations and the European Union met in Berlin to acknowledge the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. The conference produced no binding measures, but it did recognize the gravity of the problem and the necessity of cutting emissions.
The alarm had been ringing long before. In 1968, the Stanford Research Institute warned the American Petroleum Institute that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels would drive dangerous atmospheric increases with planetary consequences: significant temperature rises by 2000, melting of Antarctic ice, sea‑level rise, ocean warming, and shifts in photosynthesis. Earlier still, in 1912, Popular Mechanics cautioned that burning roughly two billion tons of coal a year was adding some seven billion tons of CO₂ to the atmosphere—thickening Earth’s “blanket” and likely warming the planet within centuries.
The next milestone came in 1997 at COP3 in Kyoto, where delegates adopted the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gases. It soon proved hollow: countries could set their own rules for approving projects and issuing carbon credits with scant international oversight. U.S. Vice President Al Gore signed, knowing the Senate would not ratify; in 2001, President George W. Bush confirmed the United States would not implement the agreement, leaving it largely toothless.
After Kyoto, COP hopscotched through Buenos Aires, Bonn, The Hague, Bonn again, Marrakesh, New Delhi, Milan, Buenos Aires, and on to COP11 in Montreal (2005). Montreal revisited Kyoto, generated promises, and sustained a fragile optimism—little more. From there, COP drifted through Nairobi, Bali, Poznań, Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, Doha, Warsaw, and Lima: largely uneventful, mostly dull, a costly carousel.
By 2003, Robert Hunter’s 2030: Confronting Thermageddon in Our Lifetime laid out dire warnings that now feel uncomfortably close. I doubt many COP30 delegates have read Hunter—or any environmental thinkers. They certainly didn’t read my 2019 book, Urgent! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change.
My interest briefly revived at COP21 in Paris (2015). For the first time, the ocean was finally part of the conversation, and I was invited to participate. But the Ocean Forum quickly tilted toward the seafood industry; when their chief concern became how climate change might “affect the movement of the product in the sea,” I knew nothing meaningful would follow. My presentation was dismissed as “alarmist.”
I did, however, speak with Chief Raoni of the Kayapó about the connection between Amazonia and the ocean—the planet’s two lungs, one green and one blue. Even so, it felt like an exercise in futility, reinforcing my view that COP has become a colossal waste of time.
The roadshow moved on: Marrakech, Bonn (yet again), Katowice, Madrid, Glasgow, Sharm El‑Sheikh, Dubai, Baku, and finally Belém. In Glasgow (COP26), Greta Thunberg captured the mood: “No more blah blah blah.” COP27 was sponsored by Coca‑Cola, as if the Cola Wars had become a contest over who could be the greenest polluter. By COP28, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber—UAE energy minister and chief executive of ADNOC—chaired as “impartial” president while running a state oil company producing about 3.5 million barrels per day. The dissonance spoke for itself.
Ten years after Paris, I attended COP30 in Belém more out of curiosity than hope. I was invited to present in the Blue Zone yet locked out of negotiations. In those rooms, frank environmentalism is unwelcome; ecological reality and truth are verboten in the backroom patter.
Meanwhile, the United States under President Trump abandoned COP altogether. Canada’s leadership offered little better. Instead of confronting fossil‑fuel emissions, the government passed measures that facilitate industry by sidelining environmental protections. The difference is only stylistic: outright denial versus polished rhetoric—either way, no real action.
As Greta said, it’s all blah, blah, blah—plus photo ops and bullshit.
So, for the first time in a decade, I wandered the Blue Zone, not as a delegate but as an accredited tourist, past national pavilions doubling as investment and tourism showcases—each touting technological fixes, education initiatives, and empty promises. At the Japanese pavilion, three guards refused me entry; when I tried to speak to a representative, a superior intervened to shut me down. Their slogan trumpeted “solutions for the world,” yet every solution centered on new technologies for the fossil‑fuel industry. I recorded a video suggesting a real solution: stop killing whales. Japan wasn’t interested.
Although COP30 was held in Amazonia and more than 3,000 Indigenous people traveled to attend, only about 650 received accreditation for the Blue Zone. In contrast, fossil‑fuel executives received roughly 1,600 badges. Coal, gas, and oil were omnipresent—so, too, were the 30,000 people who marched through Belém’s hot, humid streets in protest. The most arresting moment came when thousands of Indigenous people surged toward the Blue Zone entrance, forcing the contradiction into global view: the original stewards of the forest barred from meaningful participation on their own land.
My ship, the John Paul DeJoria, berthed near the Green Zone alongside Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior. We welcomed hundreds aboard beneath a Brazilian flag altered to replace green with black—mourning the lost forests—and bearing the slogan “Sem Azul Não Há Verde” (Without Green there is no Blue).
Speaking with Indigenous leaders at COP30 confirmed what three decades of these spectacles have taught me: governments, bound to current political and economic realities, are incapable of delivering realistic solutions. Human dominance has driven a steep decline in species and ecosystems. We keep reaching for anthropocentric tools to solve an ecological crisis that demands biocentric thinking.
We need solutions that recognize the rights of all living beings—from microbes to great whales. Ecology’s basic laws are not up for debate:
Diversity: the strength of an ecosystem depends on the diversity within it.
Interdependence: species are bound together in mutual reliance.
Finite resources: growth has limits, set by carrying capacity. When one species—ours—steals the carrying capacity of others, diversity and interdependence erode, and the system’s ability to support life collapses.
Indigenous peoples understand this. They see the world biocentrically and can conceive of biocentric solutions. We need a COP in the heart of Amazonia, presided over by Indigenous leaders, to consider the rights of forests, the ocean, and all living species.
After 30 years, we cannot rely on world leaders to solve climate change. Shackled to the fossil‑fuel industry, they arrive for the show—without substance, without action. Environmentalists and Indigenous nations must act—without compromise and without co‑option. The alternative is the only thing COP has consistently delivered: more of nothing that matters.
Captain Paul Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972, the founder of Sea Shepherd in 1977 and the founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in 2022. He is also currently a national director for Sea Shepherd France and Sea Shepherd Brazil.
Captain Watson’s must recent book is Biocentrisme, published by Denoël in October 2025. His book SOS Oceans en Détresse! will be published in March 2026
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