Who pays is one of the oldest questions on the climate equity agenda. It’s time to answer it properly.
By Tom Athanasiou, Foreign Policy In Focus
I have for decades been assuring both colleagues and comrades that the climate negotiations are not a sick joke, that “COP” is not short for “Conference of Polluters,” that the negotiations matter. The argument has become easier to make as more people have come to see the implacable necessity of an international way forward. As imperfect as the COP process is, a world without multilateral climate negotiations would be far worse.
Still, there comes a time, amidst the floods and the firestorms, when even the practiced realism of seasoned observers must break down. This time didn’t quite come at COP29, though it came close. As Martin Wolf put it in the Financial Times, “the assessment has to lie between failure and disaster—failure, because progress is still possible, or disaster, because a good agreement will now be too late.”

The climate problem demands an earnest and cooperative international response, but Baku instead saw the Global North present the Global South with a “grim ultimatum”—agree to an inadequate offer of support or risk the collapse of the only international process where it has significant voice and influence. By its end, the Global South had been forced to accede. With the clap of the president’s gavel, and despite a broad push to assert that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” it got a very bad deal indeed.
There was also action on the emissions trading front, where the rules were finally nailed down. But the rules are pretty bad and the deal is more likely to generate a flood of illusory offsets than a flood of quality investment. Also, and importantly, neither carbon trading in particular nor private finance in general can honestly be expected to entirely finance a successful climate transition.
On the public finance side, the pressure to relitigate the Baku deal, already high, can only increase. The last-minute adoption of the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3 trillion”—a critical commitment to find a real path forward—is likely to define the COP30 agenda. The problem is that, barring an unanticipated political shift of the first order, the Belém COP, too, will fail to rise to the occasion.
The next year is going to be a big one.
Recent Posts
Victims Without Victimizers
October 21, 2025
Take Action Now How Corporate Democrats Led to the Trump EraBy Norman Solomon, Tom Dispatch The human condition includes a vast array of…
Teachers Scrambled After ICE Released Tear Gas Outside A Chicago Elementary School
October 20, 2025
Take Action Now Chicago teachers said they’re dealing with traumatized students in underfunded schools — while the Trump administration spends…
Israel Launches Wave Of Heavy Airstrikes Across Gaza, Killing At Least 45
October 20, 2025
Take Action Now Reports contradict Israel’s claim that its troops came under attack in Rafah on SundayBy Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com The…
Bad Bunny Destroys MAGA Backlash During SNL: “If You Don’t Understand Me, You Have Four Months To Learn”
October 19, 2025
Take Action Now “All Latinos and Latinas all over the world, and here in the United States, all the people who have worked to open doors. More than…