SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
350.org
Campaigners Urge Countries to Seize 'Momentum' at COP30 and Deliver Roadmap for Green Transition
"We need to make sure that any and all plans towards a fossil fuel-free future are built with community and frontline needs at the heart, and implemented in a way that does not leave vulnerable communities behind."
Nov 17, 2025
Despite concerns over the presence of hundreds of corporate lobbyists peddling "false solutions" at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, campaigners on Monday expressed optimism about the "remarkable speed" with which global support has grown at the summit for a Transition Away From Fossil Fuels Roadmap.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the Leader's Summit on November 6 with a call for the TAFF Roadmap, which would build on the 2023 conference's (COP28) promise to “transition away from fossil fuels” in a “just, orderly, and equitable manner."
He urged leaders to map out how their countries will "overcome dependence on fossil fuels," reverse deforestation, and mobilize resources to achieve those goals, as the presidencies of this year's conference (COP30) and last year's released a Baku to Belém Roadmap with a plan to mobilize $1.3 trillion per year in climate finance for developing countries.
350.org found on Monday that within nine days, support for the TAFF Roadmap grew from one to 62 countries.
Suluafi Brianna Fruean, a 350.org Pacific Council elder, acknowledged that a call for "a transition away from fossil fuels is not a new concept for the Pacific, it’s a demand we’ve made at every COP and every room we’ve been in."
Still, she said, "the growing support for a roadmap to this reality is a sign that the age of fossil fuels is over. We need to make sure that any and all plans towards a fossil fuel-free future are built with community and frontline needs at the heart, and implemented in a way that does not leave vulnerable communities behind."
"The presidency calls on developing countries to lead, prioritize public, grant-based, concessional finance to protect the world’s most vulnerable, and break the vicious debt cycle. However, it misses the urgency to simplify direct access to finance for communities, especially Indigenous peoples."
350.org analyzed public statements and written inputs from countries and country groups to the COP30 presidency, and released its analysis of the conference's momentum as the Brazil presidency released its "consultation text."
That document lays out options for a final agreement at COP30, including "the ingredients for a highly ambitious outcome," said 350.org.
Options in the text include establishing a three-year program to implement Article 9.1 in the Paris Agreement, which requires wealthy countries to finance adaptation and a transition away from fossil fuels for the Global South; tripling adaptation finance; and implementing Article 3.5 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which requires parties to support an economic system that leads "to sustainable economic growth and development in all parties... thus enabling them better to address the problems of climate change."
“Finance is the engine of climate action. The presidency calls on developing countries to lead, prioritize public, grant-based, concessional finance to protect the world’s most vulnerable, and break the vicious debt cycle," said Fanny Petitbon, France team lead for 350.org. "However, it misses the urgency to simplify direct access to finance for communities, especially Indigenous peoples, who hold solutions on the ground yet face enormous barriers to securing the funds needed to scale them up."
A second package of options is set to be released in the coming days and "will cover the more technical negotiating areas," according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, credited Lula with injecting "real momentum into a global roadmap to move away from fossil fuels."
But Sieber noted that Brazil recently gave its state-owned oil and gas company, Petrobras, license to drill a well in the Amazon rainforest, and Brazil is still one of the top 10 producers of crude oil globally.
"Lula spoke powerfully about justice and cooperation in a divided world, highlighting the need to get rid of fossil fuels and accelerate the energy transition," Sieber told Argus Media after the Leaders' Summit. "But he cannot be both a champion of climate justice and one of the world's biggest oil expanders."
350.org added that in a TAFF Roadmap, "finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building must be central pillars—not peripheral details—if the transition is to lift up communities rather than deepen inequality."
WWF also applauded the "momentum" at COP30, and urged "decisive political leadership" in order to "get back on track to the 1.5°C Paris Agreement temperature limit."
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF global climate and energy lead, and the president of COP20, said that "COP30 could make history by agreeing on roadmaps for both a transition away from fossil fuels and to combat deforestation. It must also respond to the emissions gap in national climate plans, and make advances on finance, including to help countries adapt to climate change."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'There Is No Lack of Money': Climate Movement Demands Billionaire Tax to Fund Greener Future
"A fair billionaire tax could fund climate flood prevention, clean air, green cities, affordable housing, and nature protection," said one Greenpeace campaigner.
Oct 30, 2025
As Hurricane Melissa leaves a trail of destruction in the Caribbean and the world prepares for the next United Nations climate summit, campaigners this week are demanding taxes to make the superrich pay for creating a better future for all, including by transitioning away from planet-wrecking fossil fuels to renewable energy.
An Oxfam International report released Tuesday found that consumption-based carbon emissions of the richest 0.1% of the global population surged by 92 tonnes between 1990 and 2023, while CO2 pollution from the poorest half of humanity grew by just 0.1 tonnes.
The following day, the UK government released a new climate action plan for the next 12 years. The country aims to decarbonize its electricity supply by 2030 and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The climate group 350.org responded by urging Chancellor Rachel Reeves to introduce a tax on ultrawealthy individuals and polluting companies.
"Ordinary people are already paying the price for a crisis they didn't cause—from failed harvests here in the UK to devastation from Hurricane Melissa overseas," 350.org UK campaigner Matilda Borgström said in a statement. "The government's plan will only work if it is funded fairly."
"There's more than enough wealth in this country to pay for affordable clean energy, warm homes, and secure jobs," Borgström argued. "The question for Rachel Reeves is simple: Whose side is she on, ordinary people or the superrich?"
BREAKING: 80+ young people are outside the Treasury right now to tell Rachel Reeves: make tax the super-rich PAY UP - or step down.This Budget, it's time for Reeves to pick a side: us or the billionaires. For wealth taxes to fund investment in a better future.
[image or embed]
— Green New Deal Rising (@gndrising.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 5:56 AM
Meanwhile, Greenpeace on Thursday took aim at the wealthiest person on the planet, Elon Musk. As of Thursday, his estimated net worth is $472-490.2 billion, though he could become the world's first trillionaire if shareholders of electric vehicle giant Tesla approve his proposed CEO pay package next week.
Noting Tesla's annual general meeting on November 6, Greenpeace called on governments "to lay the ground for a global tax reform" negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, scheduled to start in Nairobi, Kenya on November 10—the same day the climate summit, COP30, is set to begin in Belém, Brazil.
"Instead of enabling one person to become a trillionaire, governments should unlock that same scale of wealth—the $1.7 trillion, which a billionaire and multimillionaire tax could generate per year globally—to protect lives and secure our common future," said Fred Njehu, Greenpeace Africa political lead for the Fair Share campaign, in a statement.
"A fair billionaire tax could fund climate flood prevention, clean air, green cities, affordable housing, and nature protection," Njehu noted. "There is no lack of money, only a failure to make the richest of the rich pay their fair share. Governments must act on behalf of the majority of people and listen to what many economic experts suggest: Tax the superrich and their polluting corporations to finance a fair green transition."
A UN synthesis report published Tuesday shows that governments' climate plans, officially called Nationally Determined Contributions, would cut emissions by just 10% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, dramatically short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping global temperature rise this century at 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
"There is little mistaking the potential of the wealth tax to serve as a financial engine for environmental initiatives," Amir H. Khodadadi, an Iranian developmental economist focused on climate policy and green technology, wrote Wednesday for Earth.org. "Theoretically, a properly designed wealth tax could redistribute wealth and underwrite everything from renewable energy infrastructure to strategies for climate adaptation."
"Reality, however, is a good deal trickier," Khodadadi acknowledged. "As attractive as it is from those standpoints, using a wealth tax for climate action raises some very thorny questions about equity, effectiveness, and possible unintended consequences that will need to be thoughtfully weighed."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Defenders Blast Trump's 'Reckless' UN Speech
"Trump’s remarks, which downplayed the urgency of climate action and pushed for expanded fossil fuel investment, come as the world continues to experience record-breaking heat, fires, and floods," said one campaigner.
Sep 23, 2025
"A thinly-veiled threat to global peace, progress, and survival" was how one climate justice organization described US President Donald Trump's hourlong address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday as the international community took in Trump's attacks on global cooperation, migration, and the consensus among scientists that human activity is causing the climate crisis and a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy is needed to avoid the worst impacts.
Namrata Chowdhary, head of public engagement at 350.org, said the president's speech offered proof of a warning from UN Secretary-General António Guterres just hours before, in which Guterres had said the world has "entered an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering," with peace and progress "buckling under the weight of impunity, inequality, and indifference."
Trump drew gasps from the assembled world leaders when he said predictions about the climate emergency by the UN and the global science community "were wrong" and "were made by stupid people."
The BBC reported that some diplomats "could be seen shaking their heads" as the president called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the comment showed Trump "is representing his fossil fuel billionaire friends, not science."
"Climate change is REAL. It is an existential threat to the planet and future generations. We must transform our energy systems away from fossil fuels," said the senator.
Guterres' warning "was only emphasized by the erratic speech given by Donald Trump: Reckless. Disruptive. Indifferent," said Chowdhary. "And mocking with impunity the relentless suffering around the world, in a speech hard to distinguish from reality TV of the worst kind."
Trump's speech came weeks after hundreds of people were killed in one day by flooding in Pakistan—a disaster fueled by increasingly intense monsoon seasons that scientists have said are caused by fossil fuel emissions and planetary heating.
Earlier this year, a study by British and Italian researchers found that deadly flooding in Texas was also made significantly worse by the impacts of climate change.
"Trump’s remarks, which downplayed the urgency of climate action and pushed for expanded fossil fuel investment, come as the world continues to experience record-breaking heat, fires, and floods," said Chowdhary. "At the upcoming UN climate summit, world leaders face a stark choice: Stand with people and the planet, or with the fossil fuel industry."
Mauro Vieira, the minister of foreign affairs in Brazil, which will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November, told CNN that Trump's attacks on policies demanding a shift to renewable energy do not change Brazil's position on the climate.
"We believe in renewables,” said Vieira. “This will save the planet. That’s our position."
JL Andrepont, US senior policy analyst at 350.org, emphasized that a majority of Trump's own constituents know that the climate crisis is being caused by fossil fuels and support a shift away from them.
"This stream of lies is part of the same fossil-fueled billionaire agenda that got tens of thousands into the NYC streets this weekend, calling for climate justice," said Andrepont. "The leader of the world’s top polluting country is trying to tell the people—from our Pacific family members to the climate- and conflict-displaced peoples he’s deporting—that their lived reality is not real. But there are far more of us calling for human rights than there are of him and his cronies."
"We refuse to be pawns in Trump’s unjust quest to pad the pockets of billionaires like him," added Andrepont. "It’s time to draw the line and make billionaires in and out of government pay for the damage they’ve caused and fund the needs of the people.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular