The last Friday at a COP is for mopping up. This year, there was a more literal meaning of that, as the fallout from Thursday’s fire needed tending to. The section of pavilions was completely cordoned off when we arrived, and some new curtains were hung so that we couldn’t see into the area that burned.

Walking down the corridor it was kind of amusing to see these people going by:

I first wondered if they are just pushing this cart around all day in public spaces to make us all feel better, but it became apparent that somehow overnight they came up with a bunch more fire extinguishers, and it seemed like you couldn’t walk 20 feet without seeing one.

There’s another kind of mop up duty on Friday: to get rid of your local currency. The Brazilian Real (pronounced: Hay-eye) is worth about $0.20 USD. The Blue Zone is surprisingly, but intentionally, kept free of merch. There is no official store where you can buy COP30 t-shirts and fanny packs. But there is a Green Zone near by, which doesn’t require official badges to get into, and it has lots of stalls with local entrepreneurs. Colin and I went to find trinkets for family, and bought some acai ice cream (for the second day in a row).

Inside the Blue Zone, there are food and coffee places, but none of them take cash or credit cards. We had to get another card and load Reals onto it. If you gave them your passport number when you first did this, they promised you’d be able to get a refund of any unspent money. But I’m not sure about the mechanism by which this happens. Will they send Reals to me somehow? I think I still have 60-some Reals on my card and and was not able to spend them by the end of the day.

Our team coming into the COP Friday morning also prioritized getting a group photo in front of the entrance to the Blue Zone:

Then there wasn’t much to do until the “People’s COP”, which is a massive event run by the people rather than the COP officials. There was a big emphasis on indigenous people, as well as speakers from Sudan and Palestine. Lots of singing, chanting, and impassioned speeches by people who have no official power, but were making their voices heard.

Of course the important mop up of the COP is pulling together the final pieces of the text that is agreed upon by all the parties. I’m writing this from seat 36a on the runway in Belém, just getting ready to depart for Sao Paulo. After nothing happened yesterday, we were told to expect a big session today at 10am with the announcement of the final agreement. Then it got switched to 11am. We have a guy on the ground, and as of noon, he was still waiting for the room to open.

The central disagreement seems to be that the oil countries (and those they control) will not agree to any text that has a “roadmap” to phasing out fossil fuels. But the European Union made clear yesterday that they would not agree to any text that didn’t have language about such a roadmap. When you work on a consensus model where each of the 195 parties has veto power, that leads to quite the impasse. There is so much at stake, and it feels like an existential crisis no matter what.

For small island states (and many others), the continued use of fossil fuels imperils the very existence of their countries and cultures. For the oil producing countries, phasing out fossil fuels imperils the economic engines that have led to such prosperity for them.

What to do?

I’m curious what will happen if there is no agreement reached. And I don’t know whether it would be better for everyone to agree to a watered down text, or for there to be no agreement. I’m leaning toward no agreement (though no one has asked me). It feels to me like a compromise agreement sends a message that we will just continue to let the oil companies and countries continue to do whatever they want. It’s possible that a COP with no agreement would spell the end of the COP process. But continuing a COP process that only results in weak and ineffectual agreements might be worse: it perpetuates the form of doing something important, but no substance.

We’re taking off. Maybe by the time I land in Sao Paulo in four hours, we’ll know how it goes.