A-Infos (en) Brazil, OSL: COP30 and the farce of "green capitalism": popular struggle is the way out! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Brazil is hosting COP30 in Belém, selling the world the image of a 
climate leader committed to the Amazon. With the participation of 
companies such as Exxon, Braskem, Samarco, Vale, and JBS, the conference 
exposes the capitalist hypocrisy of so-called greenwashing, in which the 
same brands responsible for the planet's depredation seek to present 
themselves as sustainable and aligned with climate goals.
It is essential to unmask this charade, because the grand project 
continues to be one of deepening forms of exploitation, destruction, and 
extermination of nature and indigenous and traditional peoples-no 
relation whatsoever to promoting national sovereignty and the 
self-determination of the peoples who inhabit this land. This happens 
because the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) are not forums to "save 
the planet," but rather the opposite; they are business counters where 
global capital, mediated by nation-states, redefines the rules of 
accumulation to guarantee its own survival. The climate crisis will not 
be solved by those who created it and profit from it.

Our criticism should not be confused with the arguments of the 
far-right, which are based on scientific denialism and the defense of 
accelerating the predatory exploitation of the planet's resources. What 
led leaders like Donald Trump and Javier Milei to boycott COP30 was the 
denial of any commitment to the preservation of ecosystems, even in a 
superficial and farcical way, thus promoting an ideological dispute with 
the intention of convincing the working class to defend the interests of 
large mining and oil companies, as well as agribusiness, in the 
unbridled frenzy for the exploitation of natural resources.

"Global governance" as a structural failure

Three decades of COPs have proven their total failure to curb global 
warming. The engine of the climate crisis is the capitalist-statist 
system itself, based on the intrinsic need for infinite growth, 
incessant accumulation of value, and exploitation of workers and nature.

The COPs aimed to present a "global governance," above the oppressed 
classes and even nation-states, that could regulate the system. In 
practice, they served only to manage inter-capitalist conflicts, 
legitimize "green capitalism," and demobilize the struggle, channeling 
righteous popular indignation into institutional lobbying, waiting for 
agreements, and trusting the state, corporations, and NGOs, disarming 
popular direct action.

COP30 is a showcase of the "false solutions" that represent the new 
frontier of capitalist accumulation. Carbon markets, a financialization 
of the atmosphere, are based on providing credits to polluting companies 
in the Global North to continue polluting, while territories in the 
South (such as indigenous lands, quilombola territories, and lands of 
traditional communities in Brazil) are transformed into "offset assets." 
The reality is land grabbing, the expulsion of communities, and the 
right to pollute transformed into a commodity. Under the guise of 
"valuing the standing forest," companies are also encroaching on 
biodiversity and ancestral knowledge, patenting them and transforming 
them into private products.

Even the replacement of fossil fuels with other energy sources (such as 
wind, solar, hydrogen, or lithium) leaves intact the logic of excessive 
consumption, large-scale production, and the extractive industry. This 
"transition" creates new "sacrifice zones," requiring more mining, more 
dams, and more exploitation, merely changing the vector of destruction.

The State's Deception and the Developmentalist Illusion

As anarchists, our critique is radical: the State is not a neutral 
arbiter that can be "contested" or "pressured" to act on climate change. 
The State is the political form of class domination, and its primary 
function is to guarantee order and capitalist accumulation, suppressing 
any threat to it.

Thus, we reject the illusions propagated by sectors of reformism and 
social democracy that believe in the illusion of "political will," 
because the problem is the very nature of the State, which, even under 
"progressive" governments, acts as a manager of capital to guarantee the 
country's insertion into the international division of labor, with the 
re-primarization of the economy, where agribusiness plays a fundamental 
role.

Similarly, the defense of "national capitalism" or "strong state-owned 
companies" (like Petrobras) are not solutions, since the State acts as a 
partner and facilitator of transnational capital. The exploitation of 
the pre-salt layer or the advance into the Amazon River Basin are not 
manifestations of sovereignty; they are a deepening of predatory 
extractivism under the national flag.

The Brazilian context behind COP30

In Brazil, the holding of COP30 in Belém appears as an effort by 
capitalist-statism to reposition the country's leading role on the 
international environmental stage, while internally it maintains and 
even intensifies the extractive and accumulation logic. The Brazilian 
government presents the event as "the COP of implementation" and part of 
a large "global effort" against climate change, as officially stated by 
the COP30 presidency.

However, this self-proclaimed discourse hides profound contradictions: 
even within the National Congress, there is a noticeable growing 
resistance to the environmental agenda across various governments; an 
important example is the approval of drilling in the Amazon River 
estuary as the new oil exploration frontier in Brazil, on the country's 
northern coast. Another factor is that the country remains far from 
meeting its own emission reduction targets, even though some decreases 
in deforestation have been recorded.

It is also important to highlight that several organizations denounce 
the intense infiltration of fossil fuel, agribusiness, and mining 
lobbyists into the COP30 negotiation spaces and demand real transparency 
and limitations on corporate influence from the Brazilian presidency.

In practice, Brazil benefits from international visibility for the 
Amazon and its "climate leadership" to reinforce its role as a commodity 
exporter and stage for large infrastructure projects, while traditional 
communities and indigenous peoples continue to face evictions, land 
grabbing, and violence. Therefore, COP30 in Brazil functions as a 
showcase that masks, under the discourse of care and sustainability, the 
continuation of this predatory model.

Our perspective: Libertarian Socialism and Social Ecology

COP30 attracts a diversity of social movements, NGOs, and institutional 
entities to Belém. Our task is not to "influence" the official summit, 
but to strengthen the real struggles of our class that take place 
despite and against the summit. Our role is to ensure that popular 
movements are not co-opted by governments, institutional parties, or 
NGOs funded by "green" capital, while presenting our anti-capitalist 
program within the movements, combating reformist illusions and pointing 
towards a revolutionary horizon. We understand that we should not see 
"letters of intent" as tools for change, because history shows that 
achievements only come through direct action: strikes, occupations, land 
reclamations, blockades, and popular self-defense.

The focus cannot be on the State or large international bodies, but 
precisely on strengthening popular and community struggles that 
challenge predatory extractivism and capitalist accumulation from the 
grassroots, as we can see in the examples given by the indigenous 
peoples in Pará. For example, in February, the strike in unity with 
other sectors of the oppressed classes in defense of indigenous 
education; and at the COP itself, where, in contrast to the official 
discourse of sustainability, they continue to fight for demarcation, 
survival, and respect in their own territories. Last Tuesday, the 11th, 
the conference was marked by direct action: the occupation of the 
so-called Blue Zone (restricted zone of the COP) by indigenous people 
from the Lower Tapajós region. The act, led by representatives of 
various peoples from the region, denounced the siege imposed on 
traditional territories and the exclusionary nature of the event, which 
reserves decision-making and visibility spaces for governments and large 
corporations. This episode undeniably exposes that the true struggle for 
life and the forest is not on the official stages of green diplomacy, 
but in the organized resistance of communities that daily confront the 
advance of capital.

The crisis is global, and capital has no homeland. The only real 
solution will come from below, with the construction of an international 
self-managed popular power that contributes to building a social 
ecology, associating the preservation of the planet with the fight 
against all forms of domination. The climate crisis will only be 
overcome with the destruction of capitalism and the State, and their 
replacement by a society based on social self-management. Production 
should be controlled by the workers, territories by the communities, and 
society organized in a federative way.

We do not fight for a "sustainable" capitalism, as that is a 
contradiction in itself. The choice is not between the fossil fuel 
capitalism of the far-right and the "green" capitalism of social 
democracy, as both are paths to barbarism. The only real alternative is 
a total break with the system!

BUILD SELF-MANAGED POPULAR POWER!
DIRECT ACTION AGAINST THE STATE AND CAPITAL!
ADVANCE TOWARDS LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM!

Libertarian Socialist Organization
November 2025

https://socialismolibertario.net/2025/11/15/cop30-e-a-farsa-do-capitalismo-verde/
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