BELÉM, Brazil — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called late Wednesday for a global winding-down of fossil fuels — and said he hoped to someday get the U.S. behind it.
“We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If fossil fuels emit too much, we must begin thinking about how to live without them,” Lula said in Portuguese from the halls of the two-week COP30 climate summit, which is due to end Friday.
His comments come as talks in this city on the edge of the Amazon speed toward a conclusion, with ministers working late into the night to agree on an outcome.
Lula has been backing a “road map” for phasing down oil, gas and coal that has earned the endorsement of dozens of countries, making it one of the more substantial and probably divisive issues of these negotiations. But the United States, the world’s largest oil and gas producer, is skipping the talks, and President Donald Trump has been pursuing deals to expand America’s fuel exports.
By January, the U.S. will no longer be part of the Paris Agreement, the 2015 pact in which nearly every nation on Earth agreed to lay out a path for reducing their greenhouse gas pollution.
Lula acknowledged that absence in his speech, but said that whatever the nearly 200 countries attending the climate summit agreed to in Belém would not be prescriptive. He said he hoped “one day to convince the president of the United States that the climate crisis is serious, that green development is necessary.”
The tensions around a fossil fuel phase-out have been on display in Brazil. The country relies overwhelmingly on clean power for electricity, but it also has large reserves of offshore oil, and green groups have criticized moves to open new oil and gas fields in the run-up to hosting the COP30 talks.
Lula acknowledged that tension in his call for a road map.
“I say this freely, because I am from a country that has oil,” one that produces 5 million barrels per day, he said.
With just two days to go before talks reach an official end, countries are expected to shift into high gear Thursday and try to settle differences on sticky issues around funding to help poorer nations adapt to a hotter planet and a fossil fuel phase-out.
That means calling on rich countries to assist poorer ones and development banks to stop saddling disadvantaged countries with debt to ease the pace of the transition to clean energy, Lula said.
“Oil companies must pay part of this,” he added. “Mining companies must pay part of this.”
