“We don’t have the luxury of pessimism,” was a strange rallying cry I heard at the Cop30 negotiations in Belém.
Yet it was hard not to be pessimistic when you consider where we are in the world. In the main pavilions, I could hear leading scientists warning that climate change was coming faster and harder than earlier models had predicted.
We will now inevitably exceed the safe temperature limits set in the Paris Agreement nearly 10 years ago.
To get things back on track, we will have to rely on what is called an “overshoot” approach, where in future decades we store carbon to bring temperature increases back to safer levels. That’s the optimistic scenario.
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The more pessimistic – or some would say realistic – one is that we will cross some climate tipping points, such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the Atlantic overturning circulation system switching off, after which there would be no going back to a stable world.
In the negotiating rooms where the politicians and civil servants meet, the atmosphere was similarly unnerving.
There was a sense of geopolitical uncertainty in the air. Everyone is conscious of the rise in populist politics everywhere. And then there was the elephant in the room: the 47th president of the US.
Fewer world leaders turned up than usual, and journalists had a difficult job to do. There were not many hard news stories to chase and news editors were less likely to take their copy. Editors can read the current public mood and reckon that climate stories will not give them the traffic they need.
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Even ignoring the climate cynics on social media, I’d still find myself asking: is this really working? Is all the travel justified and the whole multilateral process worthwhile?
Until I remember, of course, those climate tipping points and realise once again, that these are the most important negotiations ever undertaken. If we don’t get every country together to organise how we make this collective leap, then we are all toast.
We have an obligation to give it our all – even if that comes with horrible logistics and burning the midnight oil, in late night negotiations, year after year.
Strangely, this Cop may benefit from the relative lack of really big decision items. We have most of the rules, targets and legal structures in place and now need to concentrate on how we implement what has already been committed to.
The Brazilian presidency put in place an “action agenda” to give this new focus on accelerating solutions, and it was coming out of one of those action agenda meetings late last week that I tipped back from pessimism to optimism.
I got a sense that the thousands of people milling around the venue were just a small part of a much bigger army, right across the world, who are committing their lives to driving climate solutions.
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Cop is increasingly about how they and their governments can come together to get local agreements and financing arrangements in place to help guide and smooth our path. My optimism was buoyed by the fact that I kept meeting Irish people who are real heroes in this global battle.
Our Just Transition commissioner Ali Sheridan was there, because the Brazilian government had asked her to lead on that vital topic within the action agenda.
Valerie Hickey, global director of the climate change group at the World Bank was also there, because she is a leading light when it comes to delivering climate finance in the developing world.
Lorna Gold and Jane Mellet were there, having carted a massive blue silk banner all the way from Maynooth, which they unfurled as a river of hope along the main corridor outside the negotiation rooms. It was seen as one of the best Cop protest moments in years.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was there too, giving one of the most convincing speeches at the leaders’ summit. He gets it, perhaps because he’s been to Cop several times before.
Of course, there is a world of difference between getting it and delivering it, which is what his Government and their civil servants now have to do. The new European target of a 90 per cent reduction in emissions by 2040 will be very challenging but it can be done, and will bring a better and healthier economy in every state.
[ Thousands hit streets of Belém to call for action during crucial Cop30 summitOpens in new window ]
We will see what Cop30 delivers on the political front later this week, but for me the real story is already clear. The rest of the world is moving on and standing up to the nonsense coming from Trump about climate change being a hoax. It is that army of officials, campaigners, entrepreneurs, scientists and scholars who are on the front line, opposing his onslaught against science.
Last week, for the first time in ages, I heard that student climate strike chant from 10 years ago: “We are unstoppable. Another future is possible.”
No matter how bleak the political environment may be, we do not have the luxury of giving up.
Eamon Ryan is former Minister for the Environment and chair of the European Commission’s housing advisory board.
