UN climate talks in Brazil begin with a focus on implementing existing pledges

UN climate talks began on Monday on the edge of Brazil’s Amazon as leaders pressed to speed up efforts to reduce the most serious carbon pollution. But the top US negotiators were absent.

The negotiators will not forget that “the climate emergency and the situation is the increase of inequality,” the President of Luis Luiz Lula da Silva Silva told. He said he chose a city that survived Belém Instead of a “finished city” driving home the impact migration has on the Amazon and poverty.

“Increasing global temperatures is spreading pain and destruction especially among the most vulnerable,” he told the conference known as Cop30.

This year’s lectures are not expected to end with any new breakthrough. Instead, organizers and commentators used this year’s conference as a “police of implementation.” Countries have a homework assignment: renew their national plans to combat climate change.

Those present on Monday pressed for cooperation. Individual nations cannot cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough, climate secretary Simon Stiell said.

Stimill told reporters the details, saying: “Your job is to fight this climate as a whole,” Still said.

Andre Correa do Lago, the President of this year’s conference, emphasized that the negotiators must participate in the “Mutirão,” derived from the local traditional name that refers to the group that unites the work.

The US skipped the conference

Joining those calls is the United States, where President Donald Trump has denied that climate change exists. His administration has not sent high-level talks and is withdrawing for the second time from the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, the first global pact to fight climate change.

The Paris agreement was supposed to limit warming to 1.5 c above the historical average, but many scientists now say that countries are unlikely to stay below that threshold.

The United States has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas than any other country. China is China’s No. 1 Carbon Polluter now, but because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for at least a century, most of the U.S.

The President of Brazil went along with the bad weather patterns without mentioning the Americans who were not there by name.

“Cop30 will be the real truth,” said Lula. “They are attacking institutions, they are attacking science and universities. Now is the time to force a new defeat on the opposition.”

Palau Ambassador Ila Sana Seid, who chairs the Alliance of Little Island States, said the US withdrawal “has really removed the gravity” from the negotiating process.

Trump’s actions hurt the fight against climate change, former US Special Envoy for Climate Todd Stern Stern.

“It’s a good thing that they don’t send anyone. It wouldn’t be self-building if they did,” he said.

Although the US government did not show, some attendees including former leaders pointed to US cities, states and businesses that they said would help them pick up the slack.

Lula and Tiell say the 10-year-old Paris agreement is working on a scale, but action needs to be accelerated. They show the devastation of the past few weeks including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean, hurricanes hitting Vietnam and the Philippines and the end of the storm in Southern Brazil.

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more common as the world warms.

“Climate change is not a threat to the future. It is already a victim of the present,” said Lula.