This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP30, opened in Belém, Brazil, with a stark reality check from UN Secretary-General António Guterres: The world has now passed 1.5 degrees Celsius of average warming above preindustrial temperatures. While climate scientists had begun acknowledging that this trajectory was likely, climate negotiators and diplomats understandably have until now preferred an optimistic outlook on the 2015 Paris Agreement ambition to keep temperatures below 2 degrees of warming. And after a woefully weak final agreement, COP30 also ended with another harsh reality: The cooperative and optimistic era of climate diplomacy, epitomized by the Paris Agreement, has given way to a more fragmented and competitive world, in which climate change is taking a back seat to other concerns.

Erin Sikorsky & Siena Cicarelli, Lawfare, 8 December 2025.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/embracing-climate-realities--the-climate-security-implications-of-cop30