Another year of International impotence around climate change, with massive police presence suppressing indigenous voices, as well as mass lobbying derailing the project.
Is there a future to COP?
Indigenous groups in Brazil picketed COP30 this year, with groups storming the entrance and attempting to get access to meet with the President of the event. The meeting has taken place on the doorstep of the amazon forest, inciting indigenous groups to push back and protest to see real climate justice take place. COP’s reputation has fundamentally shifted since 2023, when COP28, hosted by Dubai, saw a quadrupling of fossil fuel lobbyists attending. Since then, COP’s global reputation has been falling, despite the negotiations being the goal of the meeting.
“Indigenous people continue to be the biggest impediments of what (fossil fuel companies) would consider progress, which is affecting the bottom line of these fossil fuel companies,” Janelle Lapointe, senior advisor at the Suzuki foundation said. She outlined how the push back against climate progress and action against global rising temperatures is funded by companies who simply don’t want to lose profits.
Lapointe is a rights holder from the Stellat’en first nation in BC, and despite her nation’s territory being threatened by Mark Carney and his backsliding on Canada’s climate change innovations, she was only given an “observer badge,” compared to about a dozen lobbyists being given “official Canadian delegate” status.
While the police violently oppressed indigenous dissent, Big Polluters Out, an environmental activist and research group, counted there to be more than 1600 fossil fuel lobbyists at the meeting, which is 1 lobbyist per 25 attendees.
“I’m really struck by the hypocrisy of barring the people that are on the front line of this crisis and the front line of development while we let the fossil fuel lobby waltz in the door,” Lapointe said.
Canada has recently committed to creating a new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) transmission pipeline in British Columbia (BC), which has not been received well by indigenous groups. The APTN reported numerous nations who expressed both skepticism and a closure to these projects.
LNG value is supposed to peak around 2030, so building a new transmission line will likely not be finished in time for Canada to take advantage of its potentially financial benefits. Meanwhile, Canada is simultaneously holding talks with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to build a new oil pipeline to the west coast despite tanker bans on the northern coast, and despite not inviting Premier David Eby to these meetings– despite the bitumen pipeline requiring collaboration from the BC government.
Carney has not committed to following Canada’s commitments in the 2015 Paris agreement, except for a minor promise made to Elizabeth May during a question period, where he made a vague promise to keep Canada’s legally binding objectives in order to secure May’s vote for their recent budget. Although it was a loose, politically motivated promise, May used it as a pretense to vote for the budget. Critics have pointed out that it was surprising to see such a small concession win the vote of a staunch activist like May.
Considering that these discussions around a new pipeline have been in secret, and only started surfacing after the budget was passed, it seems that the meetings with Smith were hidden from public view so as to help gain the confidence vote of the green party for their backsliding budget.
Willo Prince, Education Coordinator with Indigenous Climate Action, asked climate minister Julie Dabrusin if she was comfortable with Indigenous communities “remaining in the sacrifice zone” of climate change. “Yes, or no?” she reportedly asked.
Dabrusin avoided answering the question directly, taking Lapointe and Prince aback.
“I was struck by her ability to look me square in the pupils and lie,” Lapointe said. Instead of giving a direct answer, the minister said that the Liberal government is doing well with other indigenous projects, and that they’re friendly to LGBTQ+ people. This is surprising, since the Liberals often present themselves as the best government for indigenous people.
Albert Lalonde, a project manager for the David Suzuki Foundation explained the most effective way to push back against these large emitters.
“One of the most successful ways of organizing against LNG projects is to put pressure on banks, insurers, and reinsurers,” they said. “At the end of the day, these projects are really risky. Canada is being mediocre at its own game, because even by the classic rules of liberalism and neoliberalism, resource extraction makes very little sense.”
One of the worst pieces of news to come out of COP30 is that the planet is on track to heat by 2.7 C because of failed climate policy. Lalonde is pushing for people not to give up hope.
“It’s not true that the 1.5 C objective is dead,” they said. When climate scientists are talking about 1.5C they don’t only mean in the immediate future, they mean by the year 2100. Lalonde says we have to start turning back the clock. It’s important, in their view, that we don’t let go of hope and give way to despair.
“The doomism on climate has fascist undertones,” they said. “Hope is political, and when we operate on the assumption that it’s a done deal and that we can’t do anything about it, what we are doing is making large parts of the world ‘sacrifice zones’.” Although we have exceeded the 1.5 C target, Lalonde says we need to stay above the target for “the least amount of time possible” to prevent unmitigated disaster.
“Climate hope is often conflated with denial,” Lalonde said. They do not believe this is true– despite some people claiming that ‘things aren’t that bad’, particularly climate change deniers, they believe that hope should be direct, and not reject challenges but still with the goal of overcoming.
“We need hope in the form of: Okay, this is going to be a very difficult walk.”
The world is in a terrible political context, but the climate crisis might be the ticking time bomb to force change to happen. It simply needs