Federica Genovese

(And for the record: I am not a COP go-er. I have only visited the UNFCCC Bonn hq when I lived in Germany. I have no skin in the COP travel game)

sure but somehow I suspect that the (biz) people burning thousands of tonnes of carbon would substitute these meetings with… other meetings that cost thousands of tonnes of carbon

To be clear: it is all bleak. No one should be happy about where climate politics is at.

But let’s attribute the right type of blame.

I feel the developing country view of COPs is the more righteous one: the baseline expectation is low, disappointment is the default assumption.

Does it mean that they go to COPs feeling a priori defeated? Of course not. Does it mean they aren’t disappointed? Ofc they are.

Still they come & fight.

Not sure this is what you are looking for but there is some polisci research in this space 😊
(not mine though)

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Big biz spends a fortune on lobbying at COPs because they are afraid that COPs can send big signals they do not want to see

If you go to the GS and talk to NGOs in some of the fossil fuel crushed, not very democratic places, you will hear how they are hanging on to COPs to feel legitimized.

Sure you can say that their hopes are regularly betrayed and broken, but again who tells you they would not be in a world w/o COPs?

Is there a better use of money and carbon emissions than traveling to COP destinations (or for that matter Bonn) to talk high-level climate policy? Maybe.

Is there a better institutional (non consensus) setup than the UNFCCC? Most probably.

But is this enough to say “forget COPs altogether”? idk.

Sure let’s judge COP30 for the not delivering the right momentum, but let’s not take the obviously limited and mostly directional role COPs have as reason to ditch multilateralism please.

I for one want GN countries like Italy and Canada to be shamed at COP for being a laggard. I want to have a discussion about the COP host’s climate contradictions. I want to use the COP as an opportunity to talk about China’s “climate leadership”

(With apologies for my typos)

Reminder that we should judge COPs for what they are — instruments to bring countries together to discuss how to coordinate climate policies, which will always be glocal (globally minded, locally bounded).

They aren’t magic substitutes for lack of domestic govts.

Sounds like COP30 was, as expected, a transitional meeting and that the only thing that found some tiny margins was adaptation funding…

With the exception of setting triple multilateral adaptation funding by 2035, very little novelty is left in the final text.

unfccc.int/sites/defaul...

Fair, the UNFCCC has 99 problems but the goal ain’t one…

I believe the better question is:

would a world without COPs work better, worse, or the same for climate?

I don’t think if it would crazily different but I for one want an annual timeline in which the climate cards are on the table, however partial and horrific.

It is a hard time for multilateralism but the emphasis on the adaptation “win” really projects the type of “climate realism” that we discuss in this paper — clearly something we need to seriously wrestle with:

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

No mention of transition from fossil fuels, of course.

And yes, the “affirmation that unilateral trade measures [read: cbam] should not discriminate arbitrarily” is also not new — it‘s only a small win by China/India but EU will stick to it (it may downscale a bit, but not directly because of COP).

Sounds like COP30 was, as expected, a transitional meeting and that the only thing that found some tiny margins was adaptation funding…

With the exception of setting triple multilateral adaptation funding by 2035, very little novelty is left in the final text.

unfccc.int/sites/defaul...

Because electricity will cost so much more than gas, a heat pump would need to be nearly 4 times as efficient as a gas boiler to break even on running costs (if using price cap prices).

We think the price ratio needs to be much, much lower - ideally around 2.5

you: “the Mamdani-Trump encounter shows an emergent shared set of values crossing Rs and Ds that we didn’t see during the 2024 campaigns”

me: this is just not a serious country

“Protecting the environment is not a joke. Ignoring it means signing our own destruction.”

Not an excerpt of the German Environmental Minister or the EU delegates at the COP.

Words to national journalists by the executive head of the theocratic regime of Iran.

Zohran flip your hair again we need healthcare get him to give us healthcare.

(I still know who I would pick in this delirium)

you: “the Mamdani-Trump encounter shows an emergent shared set of values crossing Rs and Ds that we didn’t see during the 2024 campaigns”

me: this is just not a serious country

American politics is just absolutely nuts

BJPolS abstract on the impact of environmental protests on public support, using evidence from surveys and experiments in the Netherlands, discussing media coverage and its effects on public perceptions.

NEW -

Public Support for Pro-environment and Environment-Critical Movements - https://cup.org/3XzCAEJ

- @dirckdekleer.bsky.social, @catherinedevries.bsky.social & @simonvanteutem.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

(^statement substantiated by our summer 2025 work trip to East Kalimatan, Indonesia)

climatevulnerability.wordpress.com

@acalacino.bsky.social @hayleypring.bsky.social

‘We can no longer predict the seasons’: why Indonesia’s coal mindset has to change It’s a climate-vulnerable nation, while also being the world’s sixth-largest greenhouse-gas emitter. Global investment in climate action is vital

Excellent climate reporting @theguardian.com, this on the climate politics troubles in Indonesia.

The country is like Brazil but on steroids: very much suffering repeated climate shocks (internalized but not spoken as such); far away from a credible transition; fully committed to burn all its coal.

Bill Gates, Tony Blair, CFR are rethinking climate change in the Trump era: more "realistically." Can we dismiss this trend or do we need to understand what it means global climate politics? 🧵
@fgenovese.bsky.social and I write for @iojournal.bsky.social
#IOFoGG
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Germany's Merz under fire in Brazil for his comments on Amazon host city of COP30 Brazilian authorities have raged against comments by Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz in which he appeared to look down on Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest

Upon his return to Germany [from Belem], Merz said “Last week I asked some journalists who were with me in Brazil: Which of you would like to stay here? No one raised their hand. They were all happy that, above all, we returned from this place to Germany in the night from Friday to Saturday.”

🤡