Cop30 live: ‘We will exterminate ourselves’ if we keep extracting fossil fuels, activists say | Cop30

Cop30 live: ‘We will exterminate ourselves’ if we keep extracting fossil fuels, activists say | Cop30

‘We will exterminate ourselves’ if we keep on extracting fossil fuels, activists say

Oliver Milman

Oliver Milman

An international group of activists here have issued impassioned pleas for a treaty to phase out fossil fuels, urging the Brazilian presidency of Cop30 to prod countries towards ending the era of coal, oil and gas that has caused the climate crisis.

The proposed Fossil Fuel Treaty is already backed by 17 countries and advocates in Belem said that countries needed to hurry up and act on the root cause of the climate crisis. In 2023, the Cop in Dubai resulted in countries vowing to “transition away” from fossil fuels, although there is little evidence of this happening as yet.

“If we continue to extract hydrocarbons from the Earth, we will exterminate ourselves,” said Olivia Bissa, president of the Chapra Nation in the Peruvian Amazon.

“We worry what will happen if we don’t have concrete action now. We as indigenous people in the Amazon are tired of being sacrificed by a group of powerful people who want to rule the planet. If we don’t do something together we will be complicit with ecocide and the assassination of humanity.”

Activists from the Fossil Fuel Treaty.
Activists from the Fossil Fuel Treaty at Cop30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, on 13 November 2025 Photograph: Oliver Milman/The Guardian

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, praised Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for urging a fossil fuel phase out but criticized the Brazilian president for allowing a new oil drilling project near the mouth of the Amazon, pointing to a recent International Court of Justice ruling that demands countries address the climate crisis.

“We know fossil fuel production continues to rise, pushing the world past planetary limits and deepening inequality,” said Berman, singling out the US, Australia, Norway and Canada for ramping up oil and gas drilling since the Paris agreement a decade ago. A treaty to end all this would be a “major act of love and justice for our time,” she added.

Given the format of this Cop, and pushback that is already happening from Saudi Arabia and other big oil producers, it’s unclear what, if any, language on fossil fuel phase out will be included in this year’s agreement.

A major opponent of any such pact would be Donald Trump, who has called for the US, and the rest of the world, to “drill, baby, drill.” Crystal Cavalier, a Native American woman from North Carolina, is at Cop30, unlike the US government, and said a new treaty would at least put international pressure on the US to kick its fossil fuel habit.

“We are being targeted in sacrifice zones that are pushing our ecosystems to the brink,” she said. “Our current government is aggressively rolling back environmental protections.

“The Fossil Fuel treaty can be a tool, a pressure point that frontline communities can wield when their governments avoid accountability. We need external pressure in the US, we can’t do this alone. The US isn’t showing up, but the rest of the world can show up for us.”

Share

Updated at 

Key events

Dharna Noor

Thousands of media professionals are at the United Nations climate talks in Brazil. Almost none of them appear to be from the four major US broadcasters, my colleagues Dharna Noor and Jonathan Watts write from Belém.

Nearly 4,000 members of the media registered to attend the global climate conference, known as Cop30, according to a preliminary list released by the United Nations climate body on Tuesday. But none of the “big four” US broadcasters – CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox – appear to currently have teams present at the talks.

According to the list, no representatives from CBS, NBC, or Fox signed up to attend the talks. Two US staffers from ABC signed up to attend, and though they are reporting on the summit, it is unclear if they are in Brazil.

The big four television outlets also appear not to be covering the climate negotiations in a significant way. In a review of TV coverage of Cop30 shared exclusively with the Guardian, the non-profit Media Matters found that weekday morning and evening national news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC had not covered Cop30 from 6 November through 11 November. Fox News aired two segments that totalled roughly five minutes of coverage, one of which promoted “anti-climate narratives”, Media Matters said.

The Guardian has contacted all four major broadcasters for comment.

It’s “unimaginable” that major western broadcasters would choose to sit out the talks, said Stefano Wrobleski, director of InfoAmazonia, a non-profit independent media outlet focused on the Amazonian region.

“I can’t see how or why an outlet with funds would choose not to come to Brazil for this,” he said. “We are here and we have a much smaller budget than the big outlets in the US.”

Related Posts