The U.N.'s COP30 climate talks opened near the Brazilian Amazon with leaders urging faster, united action to reduce carbon pollution after decades of limited progress. COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago framed the meeting around mutirão, a concept of collective effort, and warned that change must be chosen together or forced by disaster. The absence of a strong U.S. delegation, new WMO data showing record 2024 temperatures and sea levels, and calls from officials and scientists emphasized the urgency of people-centered, accelerated climate measures.
COP30 Opens at the Amazon’s Edge — Leaders Urge Faster, United Action on Climate
The U.N.'s COP30 climate talks opened near the Brazilian Amazon with leaders urging faster, united action to reduce carbon pollution after decades of limited progress. COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago framed the meeting around mutirão, a concept of collective effort, and warned that change must be chosen together or forced by disaster. The absence of a strong U.S. delegation, new WMO data showing record 2024 temperatures and sea levels, and calls from officials and scientists emphasized the urgency of people-centered, accelerated climate measures.
01:59 AM, 11/11/2025Environment
COP30 Opens at the Edge of the Amazon: Urgent Call to Accelerate Climate Action
U.N. climate negotiations opened Monday in Belém, on the edge of Brazil's Amazon, where leaders urged faster, cooperative action after more than 30 years of diplomacy aimed at cutting the carbon pollution that drives global warming.
André Corrêa do Lago, president of COP30, invoked the Brazilian concept of mutirão — a word of Indigenous origin describing people joining forces to accomplish a shared task — and urged negotiators to choose collective change rather than wait for catastrophe.
“Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy,” do Lago wrote. “We can change. But we must do it together.”
Calls for unity are complicated by the absence of a strong U.S. delegation. The Trump administration did not send senior negotiators and is withdrawing, for a second time, from the Paris Agreement — a decade-old global pact many here still view as a partial achievement.
Historically, the United States has emitted more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas than any other nation. China is the world's largest current annual emitter, but because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, much of today's warming stems from past U.S. emissions.
“The geopolitical landscape is particularly challenging,” said Palau Ambassador Ilana Seid, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States. Small island nations are among those most exposed to climate impacts as rising seas erode land and threaten communities. Former U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said the president's actions damage international efforts but argued a U.S. delegation might not have been constructive.
A World Meteorological Organization report released earlier this year warned that climate change is accelerating and that some impacts may be irreversible for centuries. The State of the Global Climate report confirmed that global temperatures, greenhouse gas concentrations and sea levels hit record highs in 2024.
U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell urged negotiators to speed up implementation — especially to protect the Amazon and vulnerable communities — and to link policies to "people's real lives," citing recent extreme events from Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean to super typhoons in Southeast Asia and a tornado in southern Brazil.
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, likened the talks to a potluck: each country brings its emissions-cutting pledge, and the quality of those contributions varies. She noted that cities, states and businesses in the United States may step in to fill some gaps left by the national government's absence.
Organizers stressed that, while progress has been made, it is insufficient: climate change is no longer merely a future threat but a present tragedy that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable.