The Poet told us that the Earth said this: “Parched by heat she heaved up her smothered face…if I must die by fire, lighten my suffering, I scarce can open my lips to speak these words…the hot smoke was choking her”. That’s Ovid, from his Metamorphoses (written when Jesus was still a lad, working in his dad’s workshop). And he (Ovid) was telling the tale of Phaeton, who had borrowed his dad’s car…his dad was the Sun. And, like a lot of teenage drivers, Phaeton lost control and burned up the Earth, hence the Earth’s lament.
But bear with me, even if Latin poetry isn’t your thing…like a lot of profound things, those words of Ovid still speak to us down the ages. We’re all in danger of becoming Phaeton now. Whatever the likes of Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, and Nigel Farage might think or say, we hold our precious planet on trust…on trust…but we’re driving it like a teenager on alcopops. And if the Earth could speak: well, we can’t let her die by fire…with the smoke choking her, which is precisely what we’re at risk of doing.
Cop30 kicked off in Brazil on Monday, appropriately enough in Belém (a city in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest), and even the Conference President, André Corrêa do Lago, was sounding like a harbinger of doom…as well he might: seemingly startled by spirochetes like Trump and Farage, more gruesome harbingers of a new(ish) sort of unhinged populism, Corrêa do Lago warned that the Global North had lost its appetite for combating the climate crisis; or, as he put it with Latin succinctness, “…rich countries have lost enthusiasm”.
Signed more than a decade ago, the Paris Climate Accords are already starting to feel like a distant memory.
Lunacy
Having withdrawn from the Paris Accords in 2017 (and again in 2025), Trump sent no senior delegates at all to COP30. Meanwhile, in the UK’s very own echo chamber, Farage publicly described net zero policies as “lunacy” (Mr Pot… meet Mr Kettle); as well as claiming that scrapping climate targets altogether would save the UK a wildly improbable £30 billion a year: perhaps that’s another one for the side of a bus. Farage also wants to increase taxes on renewable energy production…you can only sigh out loud: if this sort of gimlet-eyed populism didn’t already exist, there would be absolutely no reason to invent it.
But that’s what lunacy at full throttle looks like, and if Snr Corrêa do Lago is even remotely right (which he probably is), the “rich north” is giving every impression of playing along. That’s a dangerous trend, not to mention a clear and present danger to the future of our precious planet.
Outside the rich north, though, it’s not all doom and gloom. We don’t have to be Phaetons if we don’t want to be…
The Global South (and East)
For years now, China has been spearheading global initiatives for the production of green energy, and as Corrêa do Lago also said at the opening of COP30, it’s about time other developed (global north) nations followed suit, rather than bickering about being outcompeted by China (or thinking it is). Ironically, of course, China is currently also the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but at least it's doing something about it. And so is India…
Under Narendra Modi’s leadership, the Subcontinent has become the fourth biggest producer of wind-powered energy on earth, and the third biggest generator of solar-powered energy. Renewables currently make up 50.07% of the Nation’s installed power capacity (enabling it to deliver its COP26 commitment five years ahead of schedule…in stark contrast to those countries in the west).
Between them, China and India have played a pivotal role in ensuring renewables now account for more than 100% of the world’s electricity production, despite a global surge in demand for electricity (https://ember-energy.org/).
And, with a further ironic twist, neither China nor India has sent senior delegates to COP30 either, making them strange bedfellows with Donald Trump, but perhaps, unlike Trump, they’re too busy at home making the planet safer and more sustainable.
Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) was established more than a decade ago to harness the full potential of fast-evolving and sustainable international markets: consistently meeting the demands of global communities as part of a circular economy, whilst remaining committed to the demands of People, Planet, and Profit.