The real failure on climate didn’t happen in Brazil

ANOTHER CLIMATE CONFERENCE, another failed climate conference.

- DAVID FICKLING

That' s the sense you might get from the anguished statements emerging at the close of the COP30 meeting in the Brazilian city of Belém at the weekend. Hopes that the final communiqué would incorporate a road map to transition away from fossil fuels were dashed. A planned $125-billion fund for forest protection ended up with just $6 billion or so committed.

That assessment confuses where we’re going wrong on climate, however—and what we're getting right. Take the weird refusal to mention fossil fuels in the agreement. That's not quite the disaster it appears to be. Given the ability of oil exporters to veto every word of the text, it’s quite remarkable that such references ever made it through the drafting process. The fact that petroleum producers are now baulking more aggressively at naming the problem we all face is a sign not of the failure of the energy transition, but of its success.

The International Energy Agency’s central expectation for fossil fuel consumption in 2050 has been cut by 12% since the F-words were first officially mentioned at COP26 in Glasgow four years ago. Consumption of coal in the two biggest users, China and India, has fallen this year. These are far more substantive outcomes than the terminology of a United Nations document.