Claudia Horn is a lecturer at the Department of European and International Studies of King’s College London. She is the author of Klimahilfe mit Nebenwirkungen, and her book Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium will be published in 2026.
The US didn’t send a delegation to the COP30 conference in Brazil, reflecting the Trump administration’s nihilistic attitude to the climate crisis. In its absence, the other big industrial powers once again postponed making hard but essential choices.
The EU is watering down its tepid plans for ecological reform as energy prices soar. The Left has to escalate the struggle for social and environmental justice in Europe and oppose attempts to shift the burden of climate chaos onto the Global South.
Last week’s COP27 summit in Egypt ended with the world still on track for a disastrous rise in global temperatures. But a new climate policy from Brazil after Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat was one ray of hope for those on the front lines of the climate crisis.
The COP26 summit in Glasgow this month ended with a set of vague and inadequate pledges that won’t tackle the climate crisis. Real hope lies not with corporate-sponsored elite gatherings but with the popular movements linking climate action to social justice.
Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro is trying to tone down his well-deserved reputation as a climate change denier. But the new proposals from his government serve the same purpose of blocking the radical measures we need to address the climate crisis.
Last November, left candidate Edmilson Rodrigues defeated a Bolsonaro ally to become mayor of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon. The Belém experiment could be a chance to push back against a destructive far-right government that grossly mismanaged the pandemic.