Climate Change and You | The COP30 verdict: More talk than action on our planet's future
This edition discusses the outcome of the COP30 climate talks, how India faced a disaster a day, and new research red flagging biofuels.
Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.
Dear reader,
What can a group do when they cannot agree on a plan of action to avert an unfolding tragedy, which is set to worsen? Talk a lot, make plans. and hang in there with a promise to meet again next year! This is what seemed to have happened at the just-concluded annual climate talks at Belem, Brazil. The COP30, or the 30th Conference of the Parties, where 194 countries came together to discuss the worsening climate crisis, failed to achieve what was required: A scaling up of ambitions to reduce carbon emissions and funds for the vulnerable to cope with disasters.
“COPs are consensus-based—and in a period of geopolitical divides, consensus is ever harder to reach. I cannot pretend that COP30 has delivered everything that is needed. The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide," UN secretary-general António Guterres said on the outcome of the climate talks.
“It was billed as the ‘COP of Truth’. But it ended up becoming another ‘COP of Talk’—mouthing dialogues, promising road maps, and delivering little of substance beyond one unclear mechanism," Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment said in a statement.
Yet, the outcome of COP30 and what nations could agree on was billed as a hope for multilateralism, in a world rife with narrow nationalism, war and distrust. To be honest, not all is lost. Yet. Among the successes were a call to triple adaptation finance by 2035 (to help protect the vulnerable from climate disasters), a just transition mechanism to protect workers as countries move to cleaner sources of energy, and a recognition that the world needs to move away from polluting fossil fuels. Read a summary of the outcomes here.
The summit, held near the Amazon rainforest, set the ball rolling on a $6.5 billion Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a Brazil-led proposal that seeks to compensate countries for preserving forests, with a fifth of the funds reserved for indigenous peoples. A clutch of global philanthropies is committed to investing $300 million to counter the growing public health crisis driven by climate change. However, these are small consolations, nowhere near what is required to limit the average global temperature rise to below the 2-degree Celsius target set in the Paris Agreement of 2015.
STATE OF THE CLIMATE
In the first nine months of 2025, between June and September, India experienced extreme weather events on 99% of the days, according to a new report from the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment. The extreme events include heat and cold waves, lightning and storms, heavy rain, floods, and landslides. These events claimed 4,064 lives, affected 9.5 million hectares of crop area, destroyed 99,533 houses, and killed approximately 58,982 animals. Himachal Pradesh recorded extreme weather on 80% of the days, the most compared to other states.
These record-breaking statistics serve as a stark reminder of climate change’s intensifying grip, the report stated. “Events that once occurred once in a century are now happening every few years. The frequency is overwhelming India’s most vulnerable populations, who lack the resources to recover from the unending cycle of loss and damage."
THE NEWS IN BRIEF
• India agreed to import a tenth of its annual LPG cooking fuel demand from the US, ahead of a soon-to-be-finalized trade deal.
• A standoff between the state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India and a Rajasthan power distribution company may impact investor interest in India’s green energy trajectory.
• Lack of financial assistance from rich nations and vested interests of petro-states are reasons why the world is still unwilling to discuss a fossil fuel phaseout.
• Denmark has targeted to slash carbon emissions by over 80% compared to 1990 levels, among the most ambitious goals announced at the COP30 in Brazil.
• Current climate plans might be amplifying disorder by increasing complexity faster than countries can adapt to it, argues V. Anantha Nageswaran, India’s chief economic advisor.
KNOW YOUR JARGON
Adaptation finance
Adaptation finance is the money needed to cope with climate change—the impact of events like droughts, forest fires or extreme heat. In short, adaptation finance can help communities reduce the risks they face and the harm they suffer from climate hazards. It can aid in building climate-resilient infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and help develop crops that can withstand droughts or assist families in dealing with health challenges.
According to the UN Adaptation Gap Report 2025, developing countries are expected to require between $310 billion and $365 billion in adaptation finance annually by 2035. But actual transfers were only $26 billion in 2023. This means funding has to increase by 12-14 times the current flows. “Climate impacts are accelerating. Yet adaptation finance is not keeping pace, leaving the world’s most vulnerable exposed to rising seas, deadly storms, and searing heat," UN’s Guterres said in his message on the report. At the recently concluded COP30 in Brazil, countries decided to triple adaptation finance by 2035.
PRIME NUMBER
16
Globally, production of biofuels emits 16% more CO2 than the fossil fuels it replaces, as per a new report. The same land could feed 1.3 billion people, while using just 3% of that land for solar panels would produce the same amount of energy. Today, growing crops that are burned as fuel use 32 million hectares—roughly the size of Italy—to meet just 4% of global transport energy demand. By 2030, this demand is projected to increase by 60% to 52 million hectares, equivalent to the size of France. Also, by 2030, biofuels are projected to emit 70 MtCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) more than the fossil fuels they replace, equivalent to the annual emissions of almost 30 million diesel cars.
“Biofuels are a terrible climate solution and a staggering waste of land, food and millions in subsidies. Ensuring a sustainable balance between agriculture and nature is essential to tackling the climate crisis, and burning crops for fuel only pushes us further in the wrong direction," said Cian Delaney, biofuels campaigner at T&E, an European non-profit advocating for clean transport and energy.
MOVIE OF THE MONTH
What happens when seasons shrink to just two in a year? In a village where it has not rained for 15 years, is it wrong for a child to think that there are only two seasons: summer and winter? Kadvi Hawa (Dark Wind) is a 2017 feature film by Nila Madhav Panda, exploring the theme of climate change and its impact on the lives on the margins. A blind old man is fearful that his son will commit suicide due to failed crops and piling debts. A debt collector who wants to move his family from a cyclone-prone coastal village to one where it never rains. The two are getting into a weird alliance that may or may not save their families. Available on Prime Video.
That's all, for now. Bibek Bhattacharya will be back with the next issue in a fortnight.
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