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COP30 Shows How Corporate Power Is Derailing Climate Justice
While Brazil positions the summit as an “Implementation COP,” the reality is a conference dominated by the very corporations expanding fossil fuel extraction.
Nov 20, 2025
Analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition shows more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to COP30 in Belém, Brazil. That means 1 in every 25 participants represents the industry that is accelerating climate chaos.
Lobbyists from ExxonMobil, BP, TotalEnergies, and major trade associations roam freely while delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined are vastly outnumbered. Indigenous peoples and civil society activists are squeezed to the margins, sometimes literally, as protesters blockaded entrances to be heard. Meanwhile, fossil fuel executives are in the rooms where decisions or the lack thereof will shape our collective future.
Inside COP30, the contradiction is stark. While Brazil positions the summit as an “Implementation COP,” the reality is a conference dominated by the very corporations expanding fossil fuel extraction. Nearly $250 billion in new oil and gas projects have been approved since COP29, even as the world burns. Indigenous communities, guardians of the Amazon for generations, struggle to enter decision-making rooms, while fossil fuel lobbyists walk in with ease. The people on the frontlines of climate devastation are silenced; the industry that profits from it is amplified.
Protests in Belém, from Indigenous flotillas along the Amazon River to the blockade of COP entrances, are acts of survival and resistance. Indigenous leaders like Raoni Metuktire speak for the forest, the water, and the air that sustain life. Civil society groups push for mechanisms like the Belém Action Mechanism, aiming to put communities at the center of climate solutions. Yet in the halls of negotiation, these voices are often drowned out by the hum of corporate self-interest and the whir of greenwashed PR campaigns.
To expect hope or justice from a world run by billionaires is a delusion.
True climate justice requires more than aspirational statements. It requires dismantling the structures that allow wealth and power to concentrate in the hands of the few while the majority bear the consequences. It demands a serious rethink of the COP system itself: enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, accountability measures for governments and corporations, and meaningful participation for the communities on the frontlines of the crisis.
It is time for the people to call out this hypocrisy and expose this façade for what it is: a fiesta of corporate power, a spectacle of interests flexing muscles through Big Oil and fossil fuel lobbyists. COP30, like its predecessors, has become less a climate forum and more a playground for polluters.
Perhaps one can draw a strong parallel with the genocide in Gaza. I say this because the system is rigged: rigged against the people, the weak, and the vulnerable. Witnessing Gaza makes one feel powerless in front of structures built by and for the powerful, at the expense of the oppressed. And I write not just because of genocides in Gaza or Sudan, but because of the enduring sense of helplessness experienced by the poor and working classes across the globe. Systems rigged by corporate and neoliberal interests have fueled record levels of inequality, leaving ordinary people to bear the brunt of stagnant wages, spiraling living costs, and environmental devastation. This is not a problem confined to the so-called Global South. The endemic inequality extends to the West as well: The richest 1% now control more wealth than 95% of humanity.
The global cost-of-living crisis shows the same structural inequality at work. Inflation is surging worldwide, with food and energy costs pushing millions into poverty from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia, and even in developed countries. People are skipping meals, forgoing medicine, or working multiple jobs just to survive. Governments scramble with subsidies or cash transfers, but these measures often fail to reach the most vulnerable or merely offer temporary relief, leaving structural inequities intact. The climate crisis and economic injustice are deeply intertwined, both fueled by concentrated wealth and corporate influence.
To expect hope or justice from a world run by billionaires is a delusion. Unless these entrenched systems of inequality are dismantled, unless wealth is distributed more equitably, climate justice like all other lofty promises of fairness will remain a mere pipe dream.
It is time to reset priorities and take an honest stock of COPs. If the conference cannot stay committed to its original purpose to protect people and the planet perhaps it is time to roll it back. Enough of greenwashed pledges and photo ops for polluters. The climate emergency is urgent, but these gatherings, as currently structured, serve only those who profit from the destruction, not those who suffer it.
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Two Negotiations, One Crisis: Why COP30 and the UN Tax Convention Must Finally Speak to Each Other
The world can no longer afford two disconnected frameworks for the same global emergency.
Nov 19, 2025
This week, governments are negotiating climate finance in Belém, Brazil and new global tax rules in Nairobi, Kenya. The coincidence of these talks happening at the same time—yet with almost no structured conversation between them—may be the clearest indicator of how disconnected the global response still is.
Climate negotiators discuss financing needs without asking where predictable public resources will come from, while tax negotiators debate revenue rules without acknowledging the rising costs of the climate crisis.
Treating these as separate worlds is no longer viable. Both deal with cross-border harms and deep inequality, and both require cooperation grounded in equity and responsibility.
The world cannot afford two disconnected frameworks for the same global emergency.
What tax negotiations can learn from climate governance
The climate regime learned early that unequal responsibility cannot be ignored. Under the Paris Agreement, global standards are paired with nationally determined plans. The system links international expectations with domestic realities.
The climate crisis has made the links between public finance, inequality, and environmental survival impossible to ignore.
International taxation has never made this leap. Failure to cooperate has allowed multinational corporations and wealthy individuals to underpay tax by shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions and hiding wealth behind secrecy. As a result, countries lose an estimated US$492 billion each year to cross-border tax abuse, according to research by the Tax Justice Network. These losses directly undermine governments’ ability to fund the climate action, social protection, care systems and economic diversification essential for a just transition.
With this round of Nairobi negotiations now concluded, countries have signaled a rare opportunity to advance a stronger UN tax convention—one that delivers fairer rules on taxing rights, tackles profit shifting, and strengthens transparency.
The convention represents a historic chance to shift the burden from ordinary people to those who profit most from pollution and extraction, and to build an international system that restores countries’ tax sovereignty—the ability of states to use tax to deliver on their people’s aspirations.
Subnational leaders are already doing what global systems have failed to do
Cities, states, and regions are carrying the weight of climate action. They build early warning systems, reinforce infrastructure, manage disaster response, and support communities during heatwaves, floods, and droughts. In practice, this means that the vast majority of climate implementation takes place at the subnational level—in many countries this accounts for 70 percent or more of climate-significant public expenditure, rising to over 80 percent in some cases. Yet these same actors receive only around 10 per cent of climate finance.
This mismatch is structural. Global climate finance is built around national governments and large international funds, with access that is slow, complex, and tilted toward institutions with high administrative capacity. Local authorities dealing with climate impacts every day are left without the stable resources they need.
Despite this, subnational governments are modelling practical, fair climate finance. Kerala’s 1 percent flood levy helps rebuild homes, roads, and schools after major floods and strengthens community readiness for future shocks. Elsewhere, solidarity arrangements between neighbouring jurisdictions channel revenue from polluting activities into joint adaptation projects. Together, these examples show how small, well-designed levies can generate stable public revenue and ensure those with greater responsibility contribute more.
These local approaches matter far beyond their borders. They show that progressive, people-centred taxation can be implemented at scale and can complement national and international systems. They are blueprints for how global rules could be designed to be more equitable and more closely aligned with lived realities.
Global South leadership on solidarity levies shows what climate and tax reform can achieve together
A coalition of eight countries—including Kenya, Colombia, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Mozambique, Tanzania, France, and Spain—launched the Premium Flyers Solidarity Coalition, backing levies on business class, first class, and private jet travel. These charges target the highest emitters and, if coordinated across willing countries, could raise around €121 billion a year, depending on design—offering a major new source of finance for adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage.
This approach builds on existing practice: more than 52 countries already apply some form of aviation levy. Several governments in the Global South are now examining just and equitable air-passenger levies that place higher costs on higher-income and higher-emitting travellers. In Kenya, for example, the new Air Passenger Service Charge sets fees at KSh 600 (about US $4) for domestic flights and KSh 6,500 (about US $50) for international flights, with higher rates for premium-class travel and the possibility of future increases through Gazette notice. These measures demonstrate how countries can advance climate ambition while strengthening the revenue tools needed to deliver it.
For many countries across Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, fiscal space is tightening, debt is rising, and private finance cannot meet essential adaptation needs. Solidarity levies are not a replacement for existing commitments, but they remain one of the most practical tools for generating reliable, debt-free public revenue at the scale highlighted in the Baku-to-Belém roadmap.
The Nairobi negotiations cannot become another exercise in managed ambition
A familiar dynamic has emerged in Nairobi. Countries from Africa and the wider South are pushing for meaningful shifts, while some high-income countries and tax havens are using procedural delays and vague language to avoid commitments. Concerns about sovereignty are raised selectively, even as the climate crisis shows that sovereignty today is strengthened through cooperation, shared rules, and predictable public finance—not through isolation.
A new global tax system is being designed, but many negotiators do not yet seem aware of the scale of this moment or its implications for climate action, inequality, and development. Without mechanisms to tax major emitters, high-net-worth individuals, and multinational polluters, the emerging convention risks becoming another symbolic agreement.
The reforms under discussion are not abstract. Ending harmful tax incentives, tackling profit shifting, and strengthening transparency could raise US$2.6 trillion a year for governments worldwide—more than enough to meet climate-finance needs and expand fiscal space for development. These are the tools countries require to invest in resilience and reduce debt pressures. Choosing not to adopt them is, in effect, choosing climate austerity—underfunded systems facing ever-rising climate costs.
Tax rules decide who carries the costs of the climate crisis
The climate crisis has made the links between public finance, inequality, and environmental survival impossible to ignore. Since 2015, the richest 1 percent have captured US$33.9 trillion in newly created wealth—an amount that dwarfs the total wealth owned today by the entire bottom half of the world’s population.
Alongside this, the world's largest oil and gas companies made around US$200 billion in profits in 2022, much of it in the form of windfall gains amid the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And all of this sits atop a global economy that still directs more than US$7 trillion a year in fossil fuel subsidies—public money that props up the very industries driving the crisis.
It is against this concentration of wealth and public resources that this week’s negotiations show how closely climate action and revenue systems are intertwined. Recognizing that connection—and acting on it—will determine the future governments choose to build, and whose pockets they expect to fund it.
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5 Reasons Trump's Economy Stinks and 10 Things the Dems Should Do About It
The Trump economy is truly sh*tty for most Americans. Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.
Nov 17, 2025
President Donald Trump claimed last week on social media that “Our economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” and that “grocery prices are way down.
Rubbish.
How do I know he’s lying? Official government statistics haven’t been issued during the shutdown—presumably to Trump’s relief (the White House said Wednesday that the October jobs and Consumer Price Index reports may never come out).
But we can get good estimates of where the economy is now, based on where the economy was heading before the shutdown and recent reports by private data firms.
First, I want to tell you what we know about Trump’s truly sh*tty economy. Then I’ll suggest 10 things that Democrats should pledge to do about it.
1. Prices Continue to Rise as Real Wages Fall
While the cost of living isn’t going up as fast as it did in 2022, consumer prices are still up 27% since the onset of the pandemic. Wages haven’t kept up.
Americans know this. In a recent Harris poll, 62% say the cost of everyday items has climbed over the last month, and nearly half say the increases have been difficult to afford.
Much of this is due to Trump’s tariffs, which are import taxes—paid by American corporations that are now passing many of the costs on to consumers. Even Trump knows this, which is why he’s removing tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef, and other agricultural commodities. But his other tariffs will remain, boosting the costs of everything else.
Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.
As a result, wages—when adjusted for inflation—have been falling, government and private-sector data show. Since the start of the year, inflation has been rising faster than after-tax pay for lower- and middle-income households, according to the Bank of America Institute.
According to the JPMorganChase Institute, the rate of real income growth has slowed to levels last seen in the early 2010s, when the economy was still recovering from the financial crisis and the unemployment rate was roughly double what it is today.
2. Job Growth Has Stalled
Americans are scared of losing their jobs. In the same recent Harris poll I referred to above, 55% of employed workers say they’re worried they’ll be laid off.
That worry is borne out in the data. Indeed’s job posting index has fallen to its lowest level since February 2021.
The Fed’s Beige Book—which compiles reports from Fed branches all over the country—also shows the job market losing steam.
The latest ADP private-sector data confirms that the labor market continued to weaken in the latter half of October, with more than 11,000 jobs lost per week on average.
Finally, Challenger, Gray & Christmas (a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions) reports that US employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far in 2025. That’s the most layoffs since 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy, and rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
3. Homeowners Are Underwater, and Foreclosures Are Up
Nearly 900,000 homeowners (about 1.6% of all mortgage holders) are now underwater on their mortgages, the highest share in three years. Many of these buyers purchased in 2022-24 with low down payments in markets that have since cooled.
At the same time, filings for home foreclosures are up about 17% since the third quarter last year (according to ATTOM Data Solutions), suggesting more borrowers in trouble.
4. Corporate Profits Continue to Rise
You might think that with all these stresses on American consumers, corporate profits would dip. But in reality, US corporate profits continue to rise, and the stock market continues to hit new highs (although the stock market is wobbly, as I’ll get to in a moment).
As a result, the investor class—the richest 10% of Americans, who own over 90% of the stock market—are reaping big rewards.
How to square this with all the layoffs and so few job openings? Amazon’s profits are through the roof, but it’s laying off 30,000 people.
First, corporations are reluctant to expand and hire because of so much uncertainty about the future, caused in large part by Trump’s tariffs and his expulsion from the US of many workers critical to the agriculture and construction industries.
Secondly, profits are being led by the six major high tech firms, whose monopolistic hold over their markets has given them the power to raise prices.
Third, many corporations are making use of artificial intelligence. AI is boosting business productivity while reducing the demand for workers. We’re seeing that trend mostly in the technology sector, which continues to substitute AI for jobs. But the trend seems to be spreading to other industries.
5. Inequality Is Widening
Put this all together and you get a two-tier economy whose inequality gap is widening.
America has always had a two-tiered economy, but for the last 80 years, the middle class has been in the upper tier along with the wealthy, while the working class and poor have been in the lower one.
Now, the middle class is joining the lower tier. This new reality has huge implications both for the economy and for American politics.
The richest 10% of households—whom I’ve described as the investor class—now account for nearly half of total US spending, thanks to the stock market surge. (Thirty years ago they were responsible for about a third.)
Meanwhile, middle- and lower-income families are pulling back. They’re facing tightening budgets, higher living costs, declining real wages, and a raft of corporate layoffs.
The consequent divergence in spending—with a smaller group of people keeping the economy going—is fueling concerns that the US economy is becoming more fragile.
With the economy so dependent on the richest 10%—who in turn are highly dependent on the stock market—a stock market downturn would raise risk of a serious recession.
6. What the Democrats Must Pledge to America
The Trump economy is truly sh*tty for most Americans. Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.
Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.
This means, in my view, promising the following 10 things. These should constitute the Democrats’ pledge to America:
- Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are import taxes that are raising the prices of just about everything American consumers buy. Democrats will eliminate them where their costs to consumers are far higher than any potential benefits in the form of new jobs.
- Another major source of high prices is monopolies—especially in high tech, healthcare, food, and finance. Democrats will vigorously enforce antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws. Giant corporations will be busted up. Mergers or acquisitions by large firms, barred.
- Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Part of the answer is stronger unions. Democrats will make it easier for them to start or join unions.
- The national minimum wage will be raised to $20 an hour. No one who works full time should be in poverty.
- Housing cost increases will be slowed by stopping private equity firms from buying up large tracts of housing and colluding on prices.
- Healthcare costs will be lowered by making Medicare available to everyone.
- Working families will get help with childcare and eldercare.
- They’ll also get paid family leave.
- If adequate-paying jobs are unavailable, workers will also have access to a universal basic income. It won’t make families comfortable, but it will be enough to keep them out of poverty.
- Taxes will be raised on the wealthiest to pay for this.
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