Cop30 is not just another climate conference — it is a crossroads
The UCC delegation at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, write: The challenge for Ireland is not just to meet targets but to demonstrate leadership — showing how a small nation can model fairness and innovation in the global transition.
“As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us:
“'With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight, and air and food and water and ideas' or, 'they went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them'."
Those words, spoken more than half a century ago by U Thant, then secretary general of the United Nations, carry an eerie resonance today.
In 1971, his warning was clear: humanity’s failure to act in time could destroy the very systems on which we depend.
Half a century later, despite our technological brilliance and scientific insight, the crises he foresaw have only intensified.
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We are now living in the age of the polycrisis — a tangle of runaway climate change, collapsing biodiversity, and chronic pollution, all amplified by global inequality and geopolitical conflict.
What U Thant described as a moral failing has become an existential one.
It is difficult to comprehend that more than 50 years after his appeal, the world has yet to make sufficient progress.
While there have been successes — the Montreal Protocol of 1987 famously reversed ozone depletion — climate action has too often been marked by delay, denial, and political evasion.
The result: rising emissions, shrinking natural systems, and escalating suffering for the world’s most vulnerable.
At the same time, governments continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths — pledging to cut emissions while approving new fossil fuel projects.
Even this year’s Cop (Conference of the Parties) host, Brazil, has authorised new oil drilling in the fragile Amazon basin, only kilometres from where delegates will meet in Belém today.
Cop30 is the 30th global climate conference under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
With 198 countries participating, it remains the world’s largest forum for collective action on climate. But this year’s meeting is not just another conference — it is a crossroads.
Set in the eastern Amazon, Cop30 is taking place in one of the most ecologically vital and threatened regions on Earth.
It comes 10 years after the landmark Paris Agreement and follows the first Global Stocktake, which made clear that nations are nowhere near the path required to limit global heating to 1.5°C.
If Cop30 fails to produce a credible plan to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels, the window to prevent catastrophic climate disruption will effectively close. The science is brutally clear on this point.
The world’s capacity to act collectively has been further tested by shifting political winds.
With the United States retreating from climate leadership under its current administration, global momentum risks stalling just when it needs to accelerate.
Yet history shows that progress is possible without unanimity.
When the Montreal Protocol was signed, the US was initially divided. When the Paris Agreement emerged, several major emitters resisted. Still, international cooperation carried the day.
Leadership, in other words, is not confined to capitals. It can — and must — come from cities, universities, businesses, and citizens.
Ireland’s emissions targets form part of the EU’s shared Nationally Determined Contribution, committing to a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.
While progress has been made, particularly in renewable energy generation and agriculture research, the pace of change remains too slow.
The challenge for Ireland is not just to meet targets but to demonstrate leadership — showing how a small nation can model fairness and innovation in the global transition.
At University College Cork, we see this as a moral and educational imperative.
Our researchers will again participate in Cop30 — monitoring developments, engaging with global partners, and sharing insights with the public.
Universities play a vital role in this effort: they train the next generation of problem-solvers, shape public understanding through research, and help hold power to account.
This year’s Cop organisers in Brazil describe their approach as a mutirão global — a collective effort.
In Ireland, we might call it a meitheal — neighbours coming together to tackle a common challenge.
Both words express the same truth: that survival, and indeed progress, depends on solidarity.
If Cop30 is to mean anything, it must move us from rhetoric to that shared, practical solidarity. The world can no longer afford to “go on playing politics until it collapses around us”.
U Thant’s warning was not a prophecy — it was a choice. Cop30 must be where we finally make the right one.
- Breffní Lennon, Rafael Pereira, and Sumaya Mohammed are attending Cop30 in Brazil as members of the University College Cork delegation
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