Thirty Years of Climate Talks and the Planet’s Still Burning

Why the COP Process is Failing

I remember one year at the UN climate change talks in Bonn, we all waited for over two weeks for the meeting to start. When it finally did, it opened and closed on the same day.

Why? Russia refused to agree to the agenda. Because there are no formally adopted rules of procedure under the UNFCCC, everything has to be agreed by consensus. That meant because one country objected, 195 others - representing nearly every nation on Earth - were powerless. We just sat there.

Two weeks of meetings that never began. Two weeks of airfares and CO2 emissions, hotel bills, and idle negotiators. Then, a few hours after the meeting was officially supposed to end, the gavel came down: the session opened, closed, and everyone went home. It was absurd - and deeply depressing.

That was the moment I realised something fundamental: the global system designed to stop climate change is set up to fail.

Consensus sounds noble. It’s meant to reflect equality among nations. But in practice, it gives every country a veto. It means the slowest, most obstructive voices can hold the process hostage. It’s diplomacy at its most dysfunctional.

And the numbers don’t lie. Since the first COP in 1995, global carbon emissions have risen by more than 60%. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has accelerated faster after we started meeting to stop it. As Dr Peter Carter’s graph shows, each COP - from Berlin to Dubai - has neatly followed the same upward curve.

That’s not because the people at COPs are lazy or cynical. I’ve worked with some of the most committed and brilliant people on the planet in those rooms. It’s because the process itself is captured and too constrained by politics and profit to match the pace of the crisis.

From a political science perspective, what’s happening isn’t random - it’s embedded into the system. First, consensus decision-making means one nation can stall the entire process, leaving everyone else paralysed. Second, the UNFCCC is built on sovereign equality, so even when the planet’s fate is at stake, no state can be forced to act against its perceived short-term interests (think oil, coal or gas exports). And third, the machinery of global climate diplomacy has developed a kind of process addiction - maintaining the talks themselves has become the goal, rather than achieving real outcomes. Together, these flaws mean COPs have become an exercise in procedural theatre: highly choreographed, symbolically important, but incapable of delivering the transformation that science and our kids and Country demand.

Global cooperation is essential - but the COP system isn’t working. That’s why at the end of this week, I’m riding again. From Canberra to Brisbane for AlterCOP 30 Australia. It’s a people-powered alternative to the official COPs, bringing together thinkers, doers, and communities who aren’t waiting for permission to act. I’ll be speaking on Day One about First Nations leadership and Caring for Country solutions - and listening to Australians along the way who are ready to lead where governments are stuck.

Because if we’ve learned anything from 30 years of international climate diplomacy, it’s this: we can’t wait for consensus and politicians to save us. We have to start doing it ourselves.

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