As the latest UN climate summit in Brazil, COP30, draws to a close—marked by deep global divisions, familiar yet futile calls to phase out fossil fuels, and widespread public indifference—the question practically asks itself: Is it time to retire this exhausted ritual once and for all? For veteran EU energy official Samuel Furfari, the answer is an emphatic yes.
In the recently published book The Truth About the COPs: 30 Years of Illusions, Furfari, drawing on his 36 years of experience at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, argues that three decades of international climate conferences have produced not a single structural result except the illusion of progress. The global climate process, he argues, has become an elaborate theatre of virtue, sustained by bureaucracies, NGOs and politicians who have turned “the climate emergency” into a permanent ritual of self-justification.
Furfari dissects the history of the UN’s Conference of the Parties (COP) process from its birth in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to its latest iteration in Belém, Brazil. His conclusion is stark: “Since the Rio Conference in 1992, global CO2 emissions have not decreased but have in fact risen by 65 percent.” Yet the meetings continue. Every year, thousands of delegates, activists and journalists descend on a new city, delivering the same speeches, signing the same declarations, and producing the same failure.