We're all 'fossil fuel interests'

As expected:

The 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC, just ended. Stakeholders are out in the media trying spin the outcome as a win. ... But let us be clear. The conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, a form of climate denial. Another Cop wrecked by fossil fuel interests and our leaders’ cowardice – but there is another way, Genevieve Guenther, 'The Guardian', 24 November 2025

I don't know why we'd expect anything different. Collectively, we have decided that we'd prefer to spend our limited resources on current needs than on reducing the severity of future problems. The concept of trade-offs is rarely mentioned in this context, but it must be: reducing global greenhouse emissions by enough to show a demonstrable impact on the climate means reducing spending on the education, housing and health of our current population. I say reducing greenhouse gas emissions, since that is the main focus of the COPs. It's not just this one that's failed: 

'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?'  From Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September 2024

Over the decades, I've suggested an alternative approach to addressing climate change. The first priority is to be clear whether we are more concerned about the climate or about its adverse impacts on human, animal and plant life. It would target a wide range of physical, biological, ecological, financial and social indicators, all of which would have to fall within a targeted range for a sustained period for it to succeed. People would be rewarded over the many years it would take to achieve this goal of a (relatively) stable climate. The main thrust of the Climate Stability Bond idea is that would supply incentives, continuously, for people to work towards broad, meaningful targets. Current efforts vaguely mention average temperature increases from pre-industrial levels...1.5, say, or 2.0 degrees Celsius; but (1) these are not actionable targets; and (2) nobody has incentives to achieve them. 

Ms Guenther blames 'fossil fuel interests', for COP's failure, rather than the people (that is, the world's population) who currently buy fossil fuels and the services they provide. I would say that with the climate, as with other environmental depredations, we've chosen as a species to optimise our current quality and quantity of human life to the cost of every other species on the planet. The only way out, in my view, is to channel some of our self-interest into improving our environment rather than destroying it. We should start by setting some meaningful, long-term targets and a system that rewards people for achieving them.