The annual meetings are held at different places around the globe. Since these meetings attract a great deal of public attention with activists agitating for more climate-related action by the host country, the United Nations authorities have had to work hard to find the country willing to serve as the host. The 30th conference was kicked off on November 6, 2025, at the Brazilian resort of Belem. The city is on the edge of the imperilled Amazon rainforest. Bringing world leaders to Belem, one of Brazil’s poorest provincial capitals, is central to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s efforts to draw attention and money to the Amazon Rainforest and the people who depend on it for their economic and cultural sustenance.
“It is the time for the people of Amazon to ask what is being done by the rest of the world to avoid the collapse their house,” he said. Lula was driven to the site of the summit in an electric car made in China, now the largest manufacturer in the world of electric vehicles — cars, buses and trucks. The Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang talked about his country’s path of ‘green and low carbon development as the means to promote economic growth and new jobs.’
What made instant news was the decision by the Donald Trump administration in Washington not to send a delegation to attend the meeting headed by a senior official. The American president has been dismissive of the campaign to control global warming emissions of gases. At one point, he called the climate control campaign a “Chinese hoax” aimed at retarding economic expansion in the United States and other industrial nations.
There can be little doubt that global climate is under stress. In the two weeks before the beginning of the Belem meeting, storms and hurricanes supersized by climate change clobbered Mexico, Jamaica and Haiti. According to the World Meteorological Organization, globally, 2025 was on track to be the second- or third-hottest year on record. This year is part of a decade that saw the hottest ten years on record. The cost of extreme weather hazards to the global economy was estimated at $1.4 trillion by Bloomberg NEF.
Trump has been aggressively campaigning against the adoption of policies aimed at reducing the impact on climate. Not only has official Washington teamed up with other oil-producing nations to oppose a global plastics treaty and compel Europe to abandon a climate law, it has also worked hard to prevent the adoption of a carbon fee in the shipping industry. President Trump lectured world leaders assembled in New York to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting, arguing that “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam your country is going to fail.”
Lawrence Tubiana, who has worked as France’s climate negotiator and now runs the European Climate Foundation, a research organisation focusing on climate change, said she was shocked by the “level of aggressiveness” with which Donald Trump and his cabinet members were opposing Europe’s climate goals. Some attendees at the Belem meeting were pleased that a high-level US delegation was not attending the summit. Their presence would have been disruptive even though US delegates have played a central role in designing climate agreements over three decades and the country arguably bears special responsibility as the world’s biggest polluter in historical terms.
Tubiana said the rest of the world would persevere without the Americans. “From here on out, we have to act with or without the US”. At the 30th summit, countries are expected to deliver new, more ambitious plans to cut the carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases they emit. Not only is the United States not aligning itself with the countries that favour controlling greenhouse gases emissions as it did in the 2025 Paris Summit, but it is also working closely with nations that are large producers of fossil fuels. In August 2025, the Trump administration aligned with Saudi Arabia to scuttle an international limit on productions of plastics which are made from petroleum. In October, the United States and Qatar joined forces to oppose European Union sustainability rules that require companies to identify and address the adverse environmental impacts of their actions.
“We can choose to lead or be led to ruin,” said Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations in the speech at the launch of the 30th Climate summit. He used the podium to scold the fossil fuel interests and leaders who he said are “captive to fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest.” The latest UN estimate is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees, said Guterres. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, in his summit speech, said “homegrown energy – wind and nuclear power in Britain’s case – enable countries like his to become energy independent from ‘dictators like Putin’.” Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, said, “investment for climate change is the growth and prosperity plan for this century.”
China’s record in developing sources of renewable energy for meeting the rapidly growing demand for power in his country drew the most attention of those attending the summit. China is the main reason why the price of solar energy has fallen faster than projected. This year the world is set to invest a record $2.2 trillion in low-carbon energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. Twice as much will be spent on oil, gas and coal technologies. The Chinese-inspired revolution is having worldwide impact.
Gabriel Boric, the president of Chile, pointed out in his summit remarks that “ten years ago we did not have electric buses. This year, 60 percent of the buses in our capital city, Santiago, are electric.”