The COP30 climate alarmism summit hosted by Brazil’s radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last week had the lowest attendance turnout by world leaders in the past four years, the Brazilian outlet Poder 360 reported.
The two-day summit marked the opening of a broader series of activities from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The two-week COP30 conference runs from Monday, November 10 to Friday, November 21.
The high-level summit, hosted by Lula in the city of Belém, Pará, attracted only 31 participating heads of state out of 198 countries that sent delegations to the event.
President Donald Trump did not attend the summit or send any high-level representatives of his administration — a decision that appears to have angered some of the participating leftist heads of state, who dedicated time off their respective speeches to lash out at Trump for challenging the global climate alarmism movement.
The turnout is the lowest since 2019’s COP25, an edition that faced an urgent last-minute change in venue from Chile to Spain due to a wave of violent far-left riots in the South American nation.
The first COP conference took place in 1995 in Berlin, Germany. Since then, editions of the climate alarmism conference have taken place across several countries yearly, with the exception of 2020 due to the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
Poder 360, in a detailed breakdown, explained that the Lula-hosted summit only featured the participation of 18 presidents, 11 prime ministers, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. The number represents a small fraction of the heads of state who personally participated in the past four editions of the COP climate alarmism event.
COP29, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2024, had 61 participating heads of state in its summit — effectively doubling the turnout of Lula’s COP30. The United Arab Emirates hosted COP28, which, according to the outlet, had a total of 139 participating heads of state in its corresponding summit, over four times more than this year’s summit. The outlet further detailed that 2022’s Egypt-hosted COP27 Summit had 102 participating heads of state, down from the 120 that participated in Scotland’s COP26.
2019’s COP25 summit, the only edition that featured fewer participating heads of state than this year’s, was an event marked by numerous logistical complications largely as a result of an urgent change in venue. The event was meant to take place in Chile in November 2019. The government of late center-right President Sebastián Piñera cancelled the event in October 2019 as a result of the violent leftist riots that initially started as protests against proposed public transit fare hikes.
The leftist rioters dramatically escalated the violence and began demanding a completely new constitution for their country. Their demands embroiled Chile in a convoluted, multi-year process that resulted in two different constitutional proposals — first, a far-left constitution in 2022, and then a conservative-pushed proposal in 2023. Both proposals ultimately failed to pass.
The sudden cancellation of COP25 weeks before it was originally meant to take place in Chile prompted an urgent change in venue to Madrid, Spain. According to the Spanish government, some “50 leaders” participated in COP25. Poder 360, citing official “High Level Segment” listings from the United Nations, detailed that only six heads of government, between presidents and prime ministers, delivered national statements in COP25.
Brazil was originally stated to host 2019’s COP25. On December 2018, two weeks before taking office, conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro desisted from hosting the climate event on the grounds that it would incur hosting costs of 500 million Brazilian reais ($94 million at press time) and it would “could compel the future government to adopt positions that require more time for analysis and study.” The event was then relocated to Chile before Spain ultimately hosted the conference.
“Of the world’s seven leading economies, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy are the countries that send their heads of state most frequently. European countries have had leaders at at least four of the last five COPs,” Poder 360 reported, stressing that 2021’s COP27 in Glasgow, Scotland, was “the last to bring together all the G7 heads of state.”
When it comes to the G20 member nations, the Brazilian outlet pointed out that “none were represented more than twice by heads of state at the last six COPs,” including Mexico and top world polluter China, two countries that have not sent a head of state to a COP since 2019.
The Brazilian government’s decision to host COP30 in the city of Belém has led to multiple logistical complications in the Brazilian city. A lack of adequate hotel room capacity in the city for the tens of thousands of representatives participating in the ongoing climate conference prompted local “love” motels to adjust their raunchy facilities to house some of the participants.
Lula and his delegation chose not to stay at a hotel but instead rent a diesel-powered boat with hotel-like features for the duration of the event. Poder 360 pointed out last week that the rented boat will consume at least 4,000 liters of diesel fuel through the climate alarmism event.
“When we decided to hold COP here in the state of Pará, we were already aware of the conditions in the state, we already knew about the conditions in the city (…),” Lula reportedly said last week. “And we decided to hold it here because we didn’t want comforts, we wanted challenges. And we wanted the world to come and see the Amazon.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
