Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said addressing energy issues will determine “success or failure in the fight against climate change.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Friday that the Earth cannot sustain humanity's dependence on fossil fuels and without addressing this reality, the fight for climate will be lost.
The left-wing leader was speaking at a pre-COP30 summit in the Brazilian Amazon, where other heads of state and government called on all countries to start moving away from burning coal, oil and gas, which are responsible for much of the planet's warming pollution.
Evidence of dangerous warming has never been clearer: the decade since the Paris agreement has been the hottest on record, marked by more hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires.
Lula said addressing the pressing question of the future of energy will determine “success or failure in the fight against climate change”, he added.
“The land can no longer support a development model based on intensive use fossil fuel this has prevailed for the last 200 years,” Lula told world leaders in Belém, where UN climate talks are taking place.
Brazil stressed that each country would pursue its own course towards a “fossil fuel transition” – a pact made by all countries at the previous conference of the parties in Dubai in 2023.
Lula is chairing the world's top climate talks just weeks after his government approved new oil drilling in the Amazon region.
Earlier this week, he told AFP and other outlets that it was “not easy” for countries to reduce their use of fossil fuels, but that the issue could be approached through the COP30 roadmap.
Rwandan Environment Minister Bernadette Arakwie told delegates they faced stark choices.
“We can continue to make incremental progress while the planet burns, or we can rise up to match the scale of this crisis,” she said.
“The era of fossil fuels is coming to an end. We must now ensure that the transition is fair, inclusive and equitable.”
“The End of the Fossil Age”
The absence of leaders from the world's biggest polluters, including the United States, where President Donald Trump has called climate science a “scam,” has cast a shadow over the talks but also catalyzed calls for greater mobilization.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at the summit that his country was moving forward with others to impose a tax on premium flights and private jets, which are a major source of heat emissions.
“It's fair that those who have more and who pollute more should pay their fair share,” he said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said global investment in renewable energy will reach two trillion dollars in 2024, eight hundred million more than polluting forms of energy.
“The era of fossil fuels is coming to an end,” he said at an event in Belem, a rainforest city on the edge of the Amazon.
Guterres warned on Thursday that the world will fail to keep global warming below 1.5C – the main goal of the Paris agreement – but any excess must be minimized before temperatures return below that safer limit.
Despite this, climate change has slipped off the agenda as countries grapple with economic pressure, trade disputes and wars, and the Trump administration's aggressive push to increase fossil fuel production.
Roadmap support
Lula lamented the “pressure and threats” that had forced the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to delay implementation of a plan to curb shipping emissions, and the need to continue alternative fuel for transport and industry, including ethanol.
And the latest round of negotiations to reach a world-first deal on plastics, a byproduct of oil and gas production produced by petrochemical companies, collapsed in August.
The idea of phasing out hydrocarbons is gaining momentum in Europe. Despite the differences, EU countries noted that they have been reducing greenhouse gas emissions for more than three decades and are aiming for a 90% reduction by 2040.
The “road map” Lula presented on the first day of the summit – a path to ending deforestation, reducing fossil fuel use and finding money to achieve these goals – drew applause from the room.
A formal decision on a fossil fuel ban in Belém is unlikely, given the requirement for consensus among the nearly 200 countries attending the conference.
However, COP30 will draw attention to countries' voluntary commitments and their implementation, which could lead to new announcements on methane, a “super pollutant” and the main component of natural gas that is prone to leaks from pipelines and plants.
© 2025 AFP
Citation: The earth “can no longer sustain” the intensive use of fossil fuels, Lula reports at COP30 (2025, November 7). Retrieved November 7, 2025, from https://phys.org/news/2025-11-earth-longer-sustain-intensiv-fossil.html.
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