Climate Delegates Suffering in the Heat “gets people interested” – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

According to reporter Will de Freitas, climate delegates need to suffer personal hardship to interest people in what they are saying.

Cop30 saw important developments amid huge disappointment

Published: November 28, 2025 4.13am AEDT
Will de Freitas
Environment + Energy Editor, UK edition

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

Cop30 was never just another UN climate summit. Its setting in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, was a reminder that negotiations now unfold within the crisis they are meant to solve.

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“Without the distraction of the US attempting to ‘burn the house down’ … the conference was able to get on with the business at hand: negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.”

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Meanwhile, Belém’s oppressive heat and humidity was noticeable even in the negotiating rooms: “This catalysed an official complaint from UN climate chief Simon Stiell about the climate conditions in the Cop venue, asking for ‘a clear delivery plan on how temperatures will be brought down within the next 24 hours’. The parallels to the goals of the wider negotiation process were hard to miss.

Stories cut through the noise

The image of climate diplomats wiping sweat from their brows as they struggle to focus in a stuffy room is compelling. And it’s this sort of stuff that often gets people interested. 

Until the final few days of Cop30, the biggest stories to emerge from the summit all had a human angle: the floods, an indigenous protest, a fire that briefly evacuated the negotiations. 

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Read more: https://theconversation.com/cop30-saw-important-developments-amid-huge-disappointment-270712

Sadly the UN has gone soft and opted out of the COP conference suffering delegates theme.

COP31 will be in the comfortable resort town Antalya. In winter in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, with mild late Fall average maximum temperatures in the low 70s, the most delegates will have to endure is rain and greedy taxi drivers. And of course there is the excitement of being a high value target located at a beachside resort which is an easy fast boat day trip from the coast of Syria.