COP30: Double Standards and Hypocrisy in Brazil

Maybe US President Trump refused to attend, but the European Commission could not miss out on the COP30 climate summit in Brazil. Not only President Ursula von der Leyen but also the EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Dutchman Wopke Hoekstra, took part. He sang the praises of ‘carbon pricing,’ or levying taxes on CO2 emissions. According to him, this is “something we must strive for: putting a price on carbon is something we must pursue as quickly as possible with as many parties as possible.”

This is questionable, given the state of the European economy. The chemical industry in particular is in particularly troubled waters. At the beginning of 2024, an important summit was held in Antwerp on this subject, attended by leading figures from European politics and the European chemical sector. This summit ended with a call for lower energy costs and less bureaucracy. However, in June 2024, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and owner of the large British chemical company INEOS, complained that EU policymakers “are listening, but I have not seen any changes yet.”

Meanwhile, virtually nothing has changed. In October, Stephen Dossett, head of Ineos Inovyn, a subsidiary of INEOS, stated, “Europe is committing industrial suicide” after yet another chemical plant in Germany had to close due to sky-high energy costs. Ratcliffe himself is now calling for “carbon taxes to be abolished. … We need action, not sympathetic words, otherwise there will not be much left of the European chemical industry to save.”

EU climate tax and regulations on export

Years of experimentation with the European energy supply, from not exploiting its own fossil fuels to closing nuclear power plants, are taking their toll, in addition to the loss of cheap Russian gas. It will take years to return to an energy supply that prioritises cheap energy, but what European policymakers can do today is to abolish the EU’s climate taxation scheme, ETS. The price of natural gas before this tax is currently about twice as high in Europe as in America. When the ETS tax is added to the European price, that price doubles. This makes the price, including tax, four times higher than the American price. One does not need to be an expert to see how difficult this makes things for European industry and what the effect of abolishing the ETS would be.

It is therefore disconcerting to note that Hoekstra wants to export this failing European model to the rest of the world. The American experience shows that there are also ways to reduce emissions by focusing on economic growth rather than taxes. CO2 emissions in the U.S., where such a climate tax or ‘cap and trade’ system is largely absent, have fallen more sharply in percentage terms per capita than in the EU since 2005, when the ETS system was introduced in Europe.

However, avoiding central planning is not particularly popular at the Brazilian COP climate summit. The order of the day is so-called ‘reparations’ that are being demanded from the West along with ever-increasing green regulations. China has criticised the EU for doing too little, even though China, like India, is continuing to build new coal-fired power stations.

Cutting down rainforest for climate change

The chosen location of the COP climate summit raises legitimate questions. COP30 is being held in Brazil, in Belém, in the middle of the Amazon region—a location that forced the Brazilians to cut down forests to build new roads and airports. Tens of thousands of hectares of protected Amazon rainforest were felled to build a new four-lane motorway.

Bizarrely, European Commission President von der Leyen thanked Brazilian President Lula for his deforestation policy at COP30, saying, “Brazil is showing great leadership. Whether it’s putting a price on CO2 or fighting for our forests.”

Even though the EU is fumbling with its own new bureaucratic deforestation directive, Brazil is not exactly a model when it comes to deforestation. Soy cultivation, for example, is responsible for major ecological damage.

In August, the Brazilian authorities decided to suspend the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM)—an arrangement in which commodity traders agreed not to buy soybeans from areas that had been deforested after 2008. According to studies, this contributed to a reduction in the overall rate of deforestation in the Amazon region. It is noteworthy that the agreement was voluntary and brought together farmers, environmental activists, and international food companies. It allowed soy production to increase significantly without destroying the Amazon region and is estimated to have prevented 17,000 square kilometres of deforestation.

Suspending the moratorium, the World Wildlife Fund said, “could open up an area the size of Portugal to deforestation.” NGOs have indicated that soy production in Brazil contributes significantly to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, both directly through the clearing of forests for new soy farms and through the displacement of small farmers who then move to forest areas to engage in subsistence farming.

Climate orthodoxy takes a back seat to comfort

Other double standards are easy to find at this UN climate summit. 

The Brazilian government had to charter two cruise ships due to a lack of hotels to accommodate all the participants. Those ships—used to house delegates from less affluent countries—are obviously powered by diesel, a fossil fuel particularly denounced by climate change activists. 

Participants in the conference have also complained about the lack of air conditioning—again, not something that lines up neatly with their own climate orthodoxy.

Danish economist Björn Lomborg—not a ‘climate denier’—concludes: 

Climate summits like COP30 should focus more on human welfare and recognize that boosting prosperity is one of the best responses to climate change because it makes people more resilient. 

Leaders should also end their obsession with costly and inefficient NetZero and double down on adaptation, as well as R&D investment to catalyze green energy innovation.”