Will world leaders ever fix climate change?

The Politics Show

The New Statesman

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's now "impossible" to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees. Can COP30 achieve anything material at all?

Keir Starmer has been in Brazil ahead of COP30 - the world’s largest annual climate meeting - where world leaders were told it’s now “virtually impossible” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. That’s according to the UN’s chief meteorologist.

Brazil wants money to protect the rainforests, but Starmer doesn’t want to give it.

Meanwhile China, India and the US – three of the biggest emitters – can’t be bothered to turn up.

So what, exactly, is the point of these climate talks?

Oli Dugmore meets Rachel Kyte, the UK's climate envoy, and Christiana Figueres, the diplomat who led the Paris Agreement, to ask if there's any hope at all for global climate plans.

Hear Christiana Figueres grill Ed Miliband on the Outrage and Optimism podcast: https://www.outrageandoptimism.org/episodes/inside-cop-ed-miliband-on-multilateralism-leadership-and-the-uks-climate-dilemma?hsLang=en

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The New Statesman.
0:05.0	Kirstama has been in Brazil ahead of COP 30, the world's largest annual climate meeting, where world leaders were told it's now, quote, virtually impossible to limit global warming to one and a half degrees.
0:18.0	That's according to the UN's own chief meteorologist.
0:21.7	Brazil wants money to protect the rainforests, but Stama doesn't want to give it.
0:26.7	Meanwhile, China, India and the US, three of the biggest emitters, can't be bothered to turn up.
0:31.2	So, what exactly is the point of these climate talks? Do they achieve anything material at all?
0:37.3	In this episode, I'm speaking to two people
0:39.2	who have been at the centre of the talks. Later, I'll speak to Christiana Figueres, the former chair of the
0:44.0	UNFCCC, who was instrumental in ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change, which seemed to be
0:49.4	a beacon of hope until Donald Trump tore it up. But first, let's hear from Rachel Kite, the UK's climate
0:55.6	envoy who's representing the UK in Belém for the next two weeks and presumably is hopeful that they
1:00.8	can actually achieve something. Rachel Kite, Kirstama told delegates last week that consensus is
1:06.9	gone on the one and a half degree target. Brazil's COP president says rich countries have lost
1:12.5	their enthusiasm. If that's the case, cop's dead in the water, isn't it? No. I think Kirstama
1:19.4	was talking to the fraying consensus in the UK amongst political leaders. I think most British
1:26.7	people want affordable electricity. They want clean water,
1:31.1	clean air. And so I'm not sure that the public consensus has gone anywhere. Globally,
1:36.5	194 countries are here. The US is walking away. 195 minus 1 is 194, not zero. And I think what President Lula was talking about is the fact that
1:48.8	he's called this the truth cop. So this is the cop where we come and we say, okay, after 10 years,
1:53.7	we aren't where we need to be. We've really got to, as Xi Jinping said, you know, strive to do
1:59.0	better. And so we're all gathered here trying to work out
2:02.2	which bits of these transitions we know are working and we need to double down on to go faster.
	...

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