Belém, Brazil — Welcome to Day 2 of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30. Things are definitely starting to hum. The hallways are packed, the drone of the air conditioning is losing out to a low buzz of conversations, and those half-built pavilions from yesterday are suddenly looking photo-ready. It’s harder to weave through the crowds now — everyone’s walking, texting, and networking at once.
If the rain holds off, that’ll be a win. Some delegates reportedly returned to soggy rooms after yesterday’s downpour, but hey — this is the Amazon. And that’s part of the magic.
There’s a different kind of energy here precisely because of where we are. As Alistair Dutton, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, put it at a Tuesday side event: Many had rolled their eyes at the last two COPs for being held in wealthy petro-states. This time, he said: “The poorest and most vulnerable could be close” — and it’s all happening in one of the “great lungs of the Earth.”