Look beyond CoP-30 for clues to our failure on climate action

The leaders of powerful countries have shown a weak will to act

- DAVID FICKLING is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy.

Another climate conference, another failed climate conference. That's the sense you might get from the anguished statements that emerged from the close of CoP-30 in Belém, Brazil. Hopes that the final communiqué would incorporate a roadmap 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 that oil exporters could veto every word of the text, it’s remarkable that such references ever made it through the drafting process. The fact that they are now balking 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 (IEA) central expectation for fossil fuel consumption in 2050 has been cut by 12% since the F-words were first officially mentioned at CoP-26 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. That's not to tell a triumphal story on the progress of climate policy in 2025—just that the real problems are far away from UN conference halls.