At world-first Santa Marta climate meeting, delegates say it was ‘euphoric’ to finally be focusing on concrete solutions

After a landmark climate meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia, where nearly 60 countries gathered to work out how to end the production and use of planet-heating fossil fuels, what have we learned?

Colombia president Gustavo Petro tells 57-country talks on a green energy transition that fossil fuel interests could destroy humanity

The world is threatened by a “suicidal” model of capitalism that is leading to war, fascism and the potential extinction of humanity, Colombia’s president has said, as he convened 57 governments to address the climate crisis.

Gustavo Petro blamed fossil fuel interests for taking ever more desperate measures to prevent a transition to green energy. “There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy – fossil fuels – that lead to death. Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life,” he said. “The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”

Climate group calls for urgent windfall tax on excess fossil fuel profits, as delegates tell Colombia conference their nations are suffering

The Middle East oil and gas crunch will impose as much as a trillion dollars of additional costs on the global economy while petroleum companies rake in spectacular profits from elevated fuel prices, analysis has revealed.

The uneven distribution of risk and reward comes amid rising concern that the US-Israeli attack on Iran is worsening inequality, poverty and hunger across a world that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels.

Emotions ran high at the UN climate summit in Brazil, which was hit by its first major protest in four years

It was a tense moment. A group of about 50 people from the Munduruku, an Indigenous people in the Amazon basin, had blocked the entrance to the Cop30 venue in protest, causing long lines of delegates to snake down access roads, simmering in the morning heat.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says he is ready to fight for transition roadmap despite opposition from some states

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The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has told Cop30 delegates that he will take his fossil fuel transition roadmap to the G20 in Johannesburg this week to campaign for it, despite reports that petrostates have said they will not accept the plan.

Before leaving Cop30 in Belém, the figurehead of the global south told civil society representatives he was ready to fight for the proposal to phase out oil, coal and gas in whatever forum was necessary.