By LISZT VIEIRA*
The threat of ecological crisis, driven by the destruction of biodiversity and the crisis of climate change, points to a true crisis of civilization
Every year, the United Nations holds an International Meeting to discuss the climate crisis and its consequences. This is the Conference of the Parties, or COP in English. This year, COP 30 will be held in Brazil, in the city of Belém.
Decisions are made by consensus and are theoretically binding on the signatory countries. These decisions always fall far short of the real need to address the extreme climate events that are becoming more and more frequent. Furthermore, COP decisions are often not fully implemented by the signatory countries, to say the least.
Initially, it is fair to acknowledge that the names chosen by the Brazilian Government for COP 30 are excellent: Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, as president of COP 30, and Ana Toni, National Secretary for Climate Change, as Executive Secretary. However, after the frustration of all previous COPs, culminating in the resounding failure of COP 29 in Azerbaijan, the challenge seems insurmountable after the criminal US president withdrew his country from the Climate Agreement of the 2015 Paris Conference and appointed climate deniers to take charge of environmental protection agencies in the US.
Donald Trump opened the floodgates. France asked on January 24th to European Union (EU) to indefinitely suspend the implementation of environmental and human rights standards in the supply chain, claiming that they are too burdensome for companies. In other words, France is asking the European Union to suspend environmental and human rights standards to reduce the impact on companies. The French Minister also requested the review of a second package of measures, much criticized by business leaders, related to the presentation of corporate sustainability reports (AFP e The Globe, 24/1/2025).
And in Brazil, environmental protection policy faces powerful enemies within the government itself. The Minister of the Environment is walking a tightrope. The Minister of Agriculture supports deforestation caused by agriculture, mining, logging and gold mining. The Minister of Energy supports oil exploration on the Equatorial Margin, near the Amazon Basin, in addition to supporting fossil fuels in general. And the Minister of Transportation supports the paving of the BR 319 highway that runs through the Amazon connecting Manaus to Porto Velho, with disastrous environmental impacts.
Brazil is one of the countries with the richest biodiversity in the world. It is one of the 18 countries that together contain 70% of the planet's biodiversity. The set of Brazilian terrestrial biomes (Atlantic Forest, Amazon, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal and Campos do Sul) is home to 20% of the planet's species, constituting 20% of the global flora. With the extraordinary wealth of its biomes, Brazil faced environmental catastrophes last year, such as fires in the Amazon, Cerrado, Pantanal, floods in Rio Grande do Sul, droughts in the Northeast, etc.
Brazilian agribusiness is the major driver of biological destruction and climate imbalance in the country. It is largely responsible for forest fires, the elimination and degradation of forests, soils and water resources, the annihilation of biodiversity, pesticide poisoning, the eutrophication of water, and violence against indigenous populations, quilombolas, rural communities and their ways of life.
Agribusiness is also responsible for the majority of Brazilian carbon emissions. In 2021, Brazil emitted 2,42 billion tons of greenhouse gases (GHG). Agribusiness accounts for 74% of this total, since 25% of these emissions come directly from agriculture and 49% from deforestation. Brazil is the 7th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and the 4th largest emitter per capita, after the USA, Russia and China.
With this environmental liability, despite the reduction in deforestation, the Brazilian government is not doing well. And, in order to articulate the interests of all participating countries, the Itamaraty will have to do diplomatic juggling to reach a reasonable Final Declaration at COP 30. In previous COPs, Arab countries prohibited criticism of fossil fuels. Another point that was highlighted in previous COPs and publicized far and wide by the media was the fairy tale of the carbon market, through which one country buys the right to pollute from another. This, of course, does not solve anything, because what is saved in one country is polluted in the other.
Furthermore, the COPs have allowed absurd interference from lobbies from the fossil fuel industry, the main culprit in destabilizing the climate system. COP 29, for example, was attended by at least 1.773 representatives of the fossil fuel lobby. This number exceeds the delegations of the countries most affected by the climate crisis.
Let us remember that COP29 approved US$300 billion per year for climate finance. This amount is far from the US$1,3 trillion per year proposed by developing nations, based on the value estimated by the UN. The figure of US$300 billion was considered incompatible with the goal of maintaining the objectives of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1,5°C. Without adequate financing, carbon emissions cuts will be insufficient.
For comparison purposes, according to data provided by Reuters/Folha de S. Paulo As of November 24, in 11, governments around the world will spend about $2023 billion per day on military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This means that the amount decided at COP6,7 is equivalent to 38,8 days of global military spending. According to the magazine Forbes, the fortune of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, was worth US$321,7 billion (R$1,8 trillion) at the end of November.
In capitalism, economic production is aimed at profit. The environment is seen as a negative externality. This is a common point between neoliberalism and traditional developmentalism, which has always considered the environment as an obstacle to development. But the fossil fuel civilization threatens human survival on the planet.
It produces lethal heat, hunger due to the reduction and increase in the cost of agricultural production, destruction of forests by fires, depletion of drinking water, death of the oceans, typhoons, floods, unbreathable air, pests, droughts, economic collapse, climate conflicts, wars, and refugee crises. Data from the European climate agency – Copernicus – shows that the heat in 2024 broke records and exceeded forecasts. In 2024, for the first time, the 1,5°C mark of temperature increase was broken, which was the ceiling established by the Paris Conference in 2015 (COP 21).
The most dramatic aspect of biodiversity loss is a massive extinction process that threatens more than a million of the planet’s approximately eight million known plant and animal species, with 75% of ecosystems having been altered by human activity, according to scientists. International conferences on biodiversity have produced very poor results. This crisis goes hand in hand with that of global warming, and in many cases has common causes.
Renewable energy sources have become competitive, but economic market forces and the governments they control sabotage the transformation of polluting fossil energy into renewable energy, which is nevertheless growing considerably. Renewables grow faster, but fossil fuels will dominate the energy mix by 2040 at least. Fossil fuels – oil/gas/coal – are expected to still constitute three quarters of the global energy matrix in 2040.

The ecological crisis, expressing the traditional contradiction “man vs. nature”, tends to be the key issue for overcoming capitalism as we know it today. The survival of humanity is at risk due to the depletion, in the foreseeable future, of raw materials essential to human life, given the abusive use of natural resources that destroy biodiversity and release greenhouse gases, causing global warming, with an enormous impact on climate change.
The increasing scarcity of resources is worsening the global situation, making wars more likely. On the other hand, the concept of economic growth based on the destruction of natural resources is being questioned everywhere by environmental movements and international scientific institutions.
In the short term, it is a question of taking immediate action in favour of the energy transition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the serious effects of the climate crisis. But the shift to a global economy based on the energy transition will lead to conflicts, with geopolitical implications as they affect the sources of national power, the process of globalisation, relations between the great powers and between developed and developing countries. We will probably see new forms of competition and confrontation that will shape new geopolitical configurations as the entire energy system is remade, aiming to overcome fossil fuels.
In any case, the energy transition alone will not be enough either.. Greed in the pursuit of profit in the capitalist system has prevailed over the survival instinct of the human species on the planet. Utopias that are currently considered chimerical, such as ecosocialism or degrowth, will be put on the table and discussed as a possible solution.
The threat of the ecological crisis, caused by the destruction of biodiversity and the crisis of climate change, points to a true crisis of civilization, to the need for a new way of life and production, that is, a profound ecological transformation to guarantee the survival of humanity on the planet.
*Liszt scallop is a retired professor of sociology at PUC-Rio. He was a deputy (PT-RJ) and coordinator of the Global Forum of the Rio 92 Conference. Author, among other books, of Democracy reactsGaramond). [https://amzn.to/3sQ7Qn3]
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE