The annual global climate summits – often hosted in exciting places – are already slammed for being grand melas that achieve little beyond adding more emissions to an overheating planet. Now, there’s a sweet twist of irony. Brazil, host of COP30, scheduled to take place in November, is, according to reports, razing chunks of the lush green Amazon to build a four-lane highway so that global leaders, think tankers, business leaders and other climate busybodies can glide smoothly in and out of the eco-conference. The government, as all governments tend to do, has defended the project, saying it – if words could kill – is an important ‘mobility intervention’ and that it is a ‘sustainable highway‘. Well, well…. The project, a little birdie revealed, was proposed over a decade ago and repeatedly delayed due to environmental concerns. Slap a green label on anything and it magically becomes eco-friendly. Tell us about it!
This road isn’t just a path through the Amazon – it’s a metaphor for what COP has become: a circus of grand speeches, lofty promises and no money to save places like the Amazon rainforests. Well, the Brazilian president is right: this will be a COP ‘in the Amazon, not about the Amazon’. If subtlety could kill…. Hope COP31 doesn’t learn from this and hold the conference on a freshly drained wetland.
