The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. After over 30 years of climate summits and with COP30 behind us, that old quote rings painfully true.
The conference continues to gather tens of thousands of delegates, heads of state and lobbyists for two frantic weeks each year, all to issue a carefully negotiated statement and reassure us that this process is still the engine of global climate action.
But anyone following the real trajectory of global emissions knows the truth: the COP system, as it is structured today, cannot deliver the speed or scale of action the climate crisis demands.
While the process has delivered major milestones such as the Paris agreement, COP30 – held this year in Belém, Brazil – has reinforced what many of us have known for years: this machinery, designed in 1992, is no longer fit for purpose in 2025.
So why do we keep doing this? We now have the climate equivalent of a lung-health convention that refuses to talk directly about smoking. A global negotiation on dangerous atmospheric interference that still struggles to name its root cause: fossil fuels. A process intended to accelerate ambition that instead normalises incrementalism.
International co-operation matters. I support multilateralism. But clinging to a failing structure does not make us serious. Reforming it fundamentally, not cosmetically, does.
Meaningful progress made nearly impossible
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was founded to do one thing: prevent ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’. That is a narrow, essential mission.
Yet the annual COP has become a catch-all venue for every environmental issue on the planet. At present, the system is facing a structural overload, asked to handle biodiversity, pollution, plastics, trade disputes, finance and energy geopolitics simultaneously.
Other global issues have dedicated treaties: plastics, mercury, ozone-depleting substances. Climate COPs, by contrast, keep expanding in scope. The result is intense horse-trading, diluted outcomes and a negotiation agenda that no team of diplomats, however skilled, can realistically handle. When everything is a priority, nothing is.
What the world needs is sharper focus. Each COP should be judged primarily on whether national emissions commitments get stronger, not on how many side initiatives are announced. It is those commitments that determine the global warming trajectory.
Outdated categories are blocking ambition
The UNFCCC’s Annex I and non-Annex I country split reflected 1992 realities. It no longer does. These outdated classifications are worsening the contention between parties.
The world of 2025 is economically and geopolitically unrecognisable compared to 1992. China’s economy is far larger – its emissions have surpassed those of the US and the European Union – and emerging economies account for the majority of new fossil fuel demand.
Yet the system still treats countries based on their 20th-century status, not on present-day emissions, economic development or capability.
This is a recipe for resentment on all sides. First, developed countries feel unable to bring their publics along when major emitters are exempt from equivalent obligations. Then, emerging economies resent pressure from nations whose historical emissions built today’s warming. Ultimately, trust breaks down, cycle after cycle.
A functional system must combine historical responsibility with current capability and current emissions realities. Anything else is theatrical rather than strategic.
Unanimity has become a structural veto on climate ambition
The COP’s consensus rule was intended to ensure inclusivity. Instead, it grants any single country the ability to block progress for nearly 200 others.
The Club of Rome’s 2024 reform blueprint warned explicitly about this design flaw, comparing it to other institutions paralysed by unanimity rules. COP30 proved the point. Major language on fossil fuels, finance and the New Collective Quantified Goal was weakened repeatedly to accommodate holdouts.
A modern system would require supermajority voting based on a combination of a number of countries, the share of global emissions and the share of global population.
This is not radical. It is how effective international bodies function. Keeping unanimity in the face of a planetary emergency is a choice, and a damaging one.
Fossil fuels remain the great unsaid
In 2024, my analysis of COP29 documented how diluted the fossil fuel language became in the final hours. Sadly, COP30 did not fare better.
Three quarters of global emissions come from burning coal, oil and gas. Yet the system still struggles to put fossil fuels at the centre of the negotiation. This is not a technical omission; it reflects political power.
As long as fossil fuel-dependent economies – and fossil fuel interests within every economy – can prevent the COP from directly addressing the core driver of warming, we will continue doing what we have been doing: talking around the problem. The world will not decarbonise by implication.
A credible COP outcome must include: a global commitment to peak fossil fuel use immediately, clear timelines for phasedown and phaseout and clear mechanisms to align national energy plans with Paris agreement goals. Anything else is evasion.
The system doesn’t need an overloaded mega-meeting
Expecting 197 countries with vastly different interests to negotiate comprehensive climate policy in one annual meeting is structurally naïve. A more realistic model would include coalitions of key actors negotiating specific issues throughout the year, which would feed into the overarching COP framework.
That means US, China, EU and India agreements on power-sector transition, targeted coalitions on industrial decarbonisation, dedicated finance blocs negotiating capital flows and regional pacts on methane, land use and resilience.
In business and in diplomacy, small groups make real decisions. Large groups ratify them. It is time to bring that logic into the climate process.
COP30 should be a wake-up call
Every year, we celebrate side deals, political declarations and partial victories. They matter. But they do not substitute for the core metric: global emissions are rising, not falling.
Much of the world’s climate progress has come not because of COP, but despite it. National policies, technological breakthroughs, corporate transitions and citizen activism have moved far faster than the negotiation halls.
The COP process still has value, but only if it evolves. That means narrowing the mandate, updating outdated classifications, ending unanimity, naming and committing to fossil fuel phaseout and structuring negotiations around smaller blocs throughout the year.
No more procedural tinkering. It’s time to treat climate change as the defining crisis of our time. The world does not need another carefully-worded communiqué. It needs a system capable of delivering action at the speed of physics, not the speed of diplomacy.
COP30 showed us that the current model cannot rise to that challenge. The question now is whether we are willing to build one that can.
David Carlin is Founder of D.A. Carlin and Company, an adviser on managing global change. He was formerly Head of Risk at the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative.
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