U.S. Boycotts COP30, UN Grabs Extra Energy

https://thenewamerican.com/print/u-s-boycotts-cop30-un-grabs-more-power/

By Alex Newman

BELÉM, Brazil — Rumors of the global climate regime’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. U.S. President Donald Trump’s boycott of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP30, may have knocked some wind out of the global-warming movement’s sails in 2025. But schemes to undermine national sovereignty, individual liberty, and Western economic prosperity still advanced in a major way at the latest conference, which was held November 10-21 in Belém, Brazil. The globalist plan is clear: Keep building the global climate regime brick by brick, mostly under the radar, while waiting 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. That does not include the $1.3 trillion annually that was agreed to separately. All governments, aside from the United States, also renewed their total commitment to the Paris accord and the broader UN fight against CO₂ emissions. And a new set of “global indicators” to “track progress” on “climate” was enshrined into this year’s deal, too.

However, much of the most significant “progress” at this year’s summit took the form of supplemental agreements and side deals approved by coalitions of governments outside the formal Conference of the Parties system. Everything from full-blown censorship of “misinformation” to the globalizing of “carbon markets” and “phasing out fossil fuels” was enshrined in separate documents. These deals brought together informal groupings of governments and dictatorships anxious to move faster than the rest of the global “consensus.” But the expectation is that all governments will eventually catch up, perhaps after Trump leaves office.

Much of the sparse U.S. press reporting and most of the tax-funded rent-a-mob nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) portrayed the summit as essentially a failure and a “COP flop.” 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.

COP30 did take baby steps in that direction, though. It is true that there were strong headwinds: Trump has been loudly ridiculing the climate-change “hoax,” and he even suggested during the summit that those involved in the climate “conspiracy” were being investigated and may be prosecuted. Even alarmist billionaire Bill Gates toned down the hysteria on climate, perhaps hoping to cash in on energy-hungry AI while Trump is in the White House.

And so it may be true that the progress made was not enough for those seeking faster empowerment of the UN’s climate regime, but this same general argument is made every year — even when the summit takes a giant leap forward. In any case, the momentum remains firmly with the alarmists and globalists despite minor setbacks.

The Global Mutirão Deal: CO₂ Must Go

The final agreement is bold. First, the wealth redistribution being sought grows every year. This year’s agreement demands $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. It also calls for tripling “adaptation finance,” a separate funding scheme, over 2025 levels by 2030. Ironically, during COP30, the alarmist U.K. Guardian released an investigation showing that Communist China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others were among the nations receiving “large sums of climate finance.” Less than a fifth of that “finance” was going to the poorest fourth of countries.

In addition to massive increases in wealth redistribution, 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. Every UN member at the summit signed on to this, including all U.S. “allies,” none of whom were willing to speak to JP on record.

Perhaps even more concerning is the discussion of the UN-backed “carbon budget.” The deal approved at COP30 claims humans have already emitted four-fifths of their allowable budget, with the United States and Europe responsible for the bulk of that. 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 JP that more CO₂ would be good for the world. But from the perspective of tyrants, CO₂ as the enemy is the perfect pretext for controlling every human activity.

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 purports to lock nations into an intricate web of new “global adaptation indicators,” mandatory reporting cycles, gender-based “climate assessments,” and cross-border monitoring schemes 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. While Marxist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva did not get his wish for a “global environmental council” with enforcement powers, this is an important step in that direction. 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 governments’ planning, the final COP30 deal effectively builds the scaffolding and framework for a permanent international oversight regime. For now, the actual emission targets and finance pledges remain relatively vague and nonspecific. But there is always next year’s COP, or the one after that, or even the one after Trump leaves office and hands power over to the next U.S. president.

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.

The Wish List: Total Control

While they did not get their more extreme demands in the final deal, the wish list of the climate Borg that congregates in exotic locations every year to “Save the Climate” has become increasingly radical. The process is simple: The Deep State decides what the policy objectives are. Then, it funds phony “grassroots movements” to agitate for those things, providing pressure from below. And it buys politicians to make the case, providing pressure from above. Finally, media outlets funded by governments or special interests present the demands as reasonable requests from “civil society” that governments and the UN are simply listening to. And soon, the talking points move into the “mainstream.”

One of the major talking points throughout recent summits has been the prospect of further advancing the phaseout of fossil fuels. The first big win for the movement occurred at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. While Arab dictatorships, communist regimes, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were exposed literally making oil deals at the summit, the final agreement explicitly called for the phaseout of fossil fuels for the first time ever. Of course, as JP explained at the time, the phaseout of cheap and reliable energy was only ever intended to apply to the United States and the Western world.

At COP30, talk of creating the “roadmap” to make the phaseout possible was all the rage. Global Policy Campaign Manager Romain Ioualalen with the Rockefeller oil-dynasty front group Oil Change International, among the most consequential groups demanding this end to fossil fuels, was blunt when speaking to JP about it.

“You cannot have negotiations to tackle climate change without tackling the root cause of climate change, which is our continued dependence on oil, coal, and gas,” he said, claiming it was feasible to eliminate hydrocarbons even as he defended Communist China’s ongoing and gargantuan increases in CO₂ emissions. “Not only do you need finance [money], but you also need the rich countries that still produce a lot of oil and gas such as the United States, Canada, Norway, and Australia — to phase out first.” Indeed.

Greenpeace, one of the most powerful astroturf groups in the climate movement, drew up a gargantuan bill for “polluters.” Demanding an estimated $5 trillion from Western oil companies for everything from hurricanes and droughts to floods and other disasters, the far-left environmentalist group’s leaders said that was the least they could do. The state-backed oil giants of Middle Eastern dictatorships and the CCP with its coal machinations were conspicuously missing from the list of those expected to pay up.

“What Greenpeace has done is use the international database of disasters and then chosen the most expensive disasters since the Paris Agreement,” a representative for the organization told JP in explaining how the group came up with the $5 trillion figure. “The estimate was also produced using estimates from the ‘social cost of carbon’ from some university professors.” Of course, the outfit works closely with climate dignitaries while making them look moderate by comparison.

Other leaders and activists who spoke with JP demanded everything from trillions of dollars in “climate reparations” and huge taxes on meat to more-vigorous population control. “Net zero” is also high on the agenda. Indeed, the same process described above is being used to bring governments, businesses, the UN, and the rent-a-mob machine in line on the prospect of reducing net human emissions of CO₂ to zero. This impossible goal will create endless opportunities for profit among megabanks, oil companies, and others while giving tyrants and the UN itself a blank check over virtually everything.

UN Bosses & Alarmists Celebrate U.S. Absence

Even as the Deep State and the world’s governments and their tax-funded front groups were demanding everything and then some, the Trump administration was nowhere to be found to oppose it all. When we asked why, a U.S. State Department spokesman sent us a brief official statement: “The Trump Administration refused to use taxpayer dollars to send or facilitate any official travel for this conference, which is dedicated to hamstringing the American economy and bankrupting the American people.”

Of course, it is true that a major objective of the summit was to hamstring the American economy and bankrupt the American people. And yet, the U.S. government remains in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the underlying treaty and bureaucracy that created the COP process. When we asked about this, the State Department sent another short statement: “President Trump ordered a review of U.S. participation in and funding for international organizations to ensure U.S. investments in international organizations are not contrary to American interests.”

The strategy was popular with many American conservatives. But more than a few UN officials celebrated the fact that the U.S. government was not there to act as a roadblock to “consensus.” Former UN climate czarina Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the creation of the Paris accord in 2015 and opened COP16 in Cancún, Mexico, 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 United States 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 as she gesticulated hysterically, echoing comments by other leading figures at the summit in light of the fact that 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.”

U.S. Still In?

Unfortunately for those hoping for better news, Su may be right, experts said. As leading climate skeptic Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com told JP in an interview, as long as the U.S. government remains a party to the UNFCCC, legal analysts say, the next administration can simply re-join Paris and other agreements negotiated under the primary 1992 treaty. Getting out of the UNFCCC is “the most important thing” Trump could do right now to defeat the climate movement, added Morano, whose appearances on Fox News while at COP30 were highlighted by Trump on Truth Social.

“When President Obama signed the [United States on to the] UN Paris pact in 2015, that agreement did not need … to be ratified according to legal analysts at the time, it did not need Senate ratification,” he explained. “This was never tested, because it was just merely a sort of progression of the 1992 treaty. They said we already ratified what this treaty does. So, in 2015 we were able to start imposing the UN Paris Agreement on the U.S. because of that 1992 treaty. So, Trump pulls out in 2017 — didn’t matter. Biden put us right back in. Trump undoes the entire climate agenda — it doesn’t matter. Biden restarted it all on steroids.”

If Trump wants to stop a “future President Gavin Newsom” from overturning all his efforts to expose and stop the climate agenda, he must go for the jugular: U.S. involvement in the UNFCCC. “If we can vacate this 1992 treaty, according to legal analysts — and this is according to Politico, it’s according to media outlets, mainstream reporters as well as legal scholars — it would make it very, very difficult for the next president to get us back in,” Morano continued. “You would need to sign a new treaty, and you would then need to ratify the treaty, which I believe would be virtually impossible to do right now. So that’s what Donald Trump needs to do on the international front.”

Newsom Campaigns in the Amazon for Climate Tyranny & Presidency

As if confirming what Morano warned about, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) arrived in Belém like a rock star turned triumphant conqueror. Claiming Trump would not be a “permanent fixture” of American politics while blasting him as an “invasive species,” Newsom told world leaders that the U.S. government would be back at the table soon enough. In the meantime, state and local governments, along with the business sector, were “still in” the UN’s climate regime. Newsom also claimed he was “absolutely” standing in for the United States amid Trump’s absence.

Among other major announcements, Newsom inked a number of unconstitutional quasi-treaties with foreign governments — several of which are dominated by self-proclaimed communist and socialist leaders hostile to the United States. These “partnerships,” signed on the third day of the UN climate summit, will supposedly “improve environmental protection” and “strengthen cooperation on climate and job-creating clean energy,” his office said in a statement.

“California remains a steadfast partner in confronting the climate crisis,” Newsom declared. “These agreements strengthen our collaboration to advance healthy ecosystems and healthy communities — cutting methane emissions across waste, agriculture, and energy sectors to achieve shared climate goals. California is proud to unite shoulder-to-shoulder with Chile, Colombia and Brazil to deliver real results for people and the planet.”

With polls showing most Americans reject the man-made climate-change hypothesis and that there is little interest in “climate” even among those who believe, Newsom acknowledged that alarmists have a big marketing problem. But he urged the UN and the summit’s nearly 60,000 attendees to simply adjust the rhetoric. “Climate change can seem abstract,” Newsom said. “We need to talk in terms that people understand. It’s about people, places, lifestyles and traditions. If we put things in those terms, we can start winning people over.”

Recent polling backs up Newsom’s concern. Even as elitists demand trillions for climate schemes, less than half of Americans are willing to pay even a dollar more per month on their power bills for such policies, according to a 2025 University of Chicago/EPIC poll, with only 38 percent willing to pay as little as $1. Less than one-third of Americans are willing to pay even $10 a month to stop “climate change,” an earlier AP-NORC poll found. But Newsom and his climate friends have a plan.

“I think we have to use different language. The vast majority of my audience doesn’t know what Celsius is.  You’re talking 1.5 degrees Celsius. How many more degrees is that in Fahrenheit?” he asked. “We talk about greenhouse gas emissions. Where are they? Do they float in the sky, or where do they land? We don’t understand. We have to use better metaphors. We have to change our language.” In other words, they are preparing for the next assault — and this one presumably will be better thought out.

UN Bosses Celebrate Progress

Newsom and the UN bosses and NGO bigwigs may be right. Despite the whining from the NGO choir, totalitarian governments seeking loot, the alarmist media, and 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 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.

They also made clear that this was not simply a mission for governments: The private sector must be involved, too. As Stiell pointed out in his remarks, all UN member states present at 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 much 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 and celebrated by Stiell, dozens of governments joined forces on an ad-hoc basis to advance the climate agenda. One of 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 Markets. 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.”

The Marxist would-be despot ruling Brazil, whose regime staged a phony coup against itself and imprisoned its leading political opponent Jair Bolsonaro 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, along with the EU and virtually every other area. So are California and various other Democrat-led states. Eventually, globalists and communists fully expect the whole 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 fossil fuels and free speech. 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 on board, created “a working group” to advance the cause. 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 next year.

Obviously, the delegates attending the summit will travel there using fossil fuels. Ironically, as the delegates were haggling over the phaseout 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 JP 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 a prominent UN official leading the charge put it at the summit.

Indoctrination Also Key

Also critical 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 as they celebrated the addition of “climate literacy” to international standardized academic testing.

“Education is one of the most powerful tools in the global efforts to address the climate crisis,” argued UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 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, Education International is one of many voices seeking to dramatically and quickly accelerate the indoctrination of children. And during COP30, despite growing concerns about children suffering from “climate anxiety,” they did not even try to hide their agenda.

“As we rise to protect our planet and our homes, education must stand at the center of our struggle,” claimed Education International President Mugwena Maluleke, 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 front line.”

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 chief Craig Rucker, who attended COP30 and has been attending UN climate summits for many years. 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 JP. “Not only did the globalist climate radicals fail to get the governments 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 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. In fact, it continues to march forward, step by step, as the climate regime is built, brick by brick, COP deal by COP deal. The plan now 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 mere helpless spectators. There are critical steps that can and must be taken. On his own, Trump could deal a devastating blow to the agenda by simply withdrawing from the UNFCCC and defunding it all. But on an even broader level, Congress could withdraw from the entire UN with the DEFUND Act. With liberty and civilization at stake, Americans must get involved.