Currently — November 8th, 2021

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It’s time to admit it, even if it hurts: The COP process — the official international system of negotiations led by the United Nations to combat climate change — is broken.

After an entire generation of effort, major failures in Kyoto (in the 1990s), Copenhagen (in the 2000s), Paris (in the 2010s), and now Glasgow (in the 2020s) have put the world on a path to warm by 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, nearly twice the redline temperature rise that science says would give us a chance to preserve human civilization in line with environmental and social justice.

Bowing to national interests of the major polluting countries, the COP process has always been voluntary, based on words and pledges, not binding peer-led enforcement. Those pledges collectively have the world on a path to emitting 40% more carbon in 2030 than in 1990 when the process began, and nearly twice the level that would put us on a safe climate path.

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Deforestation and fires in the Amazon have caused CO2 emissions in Brazil to skyrocket. Even as COVID-19 halted economies and reduced emissions for a short period of time, Brazil’s carbon footprint grew almost 10% last year.  

The Amazon is one of the globe’s largest and most important carbon sinks, but at the current rate of destruction is hurtling toward a place of no return. Meanwhile, Brazil just signed on to a deal at COP26, along with 100 other countries, promising to end deforestation by 2030. However, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been mostly opposed to previous proposals to end deforestation, and it is still unclear how exactly the funding from the deal will be distributed. — Abbie Veitch