Global climate talks ended with a resolution that made no direct mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming. – New York Times “The Morning” Newsletter, 23 November 2025
“COP30 showed that climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a livable planet, with a firm resolve to keep 1.5C within reach.” – Simon Stiell, 22 November 2025
NEW NOME, Big Baird Island, Alaska (API*): International climate talks at this palm-studded resort on the balmy shores of the Bering Sea concluded today, without reaching consensus on how to deal with human-mediated climate change, the political, social, and environmental consequences of inaction notwithstanding.
In deir closing address, Climate Conference Executive Secretary Barri Beatapieda maintained an upbeat tone while acknowledging the issues and their severity.
“The blessed bright sunshine of New Nome in high Alaskan summer could not cover up the climate storm that is planet Earth in our time”, dey said. “The carbon emissions that have created this paradise, and are needed to sustain it, are collapsing precipitously, as fossil fuel stocks are depleted or lie too far below our global ocean’s surface to be recoverable, and as the human population has declined to the point that even the best efforts of individual citizens have, so far, proven to be insufficient to maintain current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
“Already, the consequences of inaction are evident, and costly. Snow and ice have started to appear on the high peaks of the Baird Islands during January and February, and, to our east, there are reports that the tallest mountains of the Brooks Range now are ice-covered year round. Lowering sea levels are threatening maritime infrastructure, and confronting ship traffic with new navigation hazards. Keystone species of soft-bodied marine animals, and algae, are suffering with the decreasing temperature and acidity of the seawater. The animals and plants of Alaska’s forests and plains cannot be far behind. Speaker after speaker has asked, nay demanded: ‘Must we wait until the palm trees freeze before we take action?’
“But, speaker after speaker has assured us that, despite the challenges that we face, despite the outlook that could be bleak if we let it be bleak, steps are being taken.
“Our information technologies are making use of the increasing energy inefficiencies of their devices, enforced by the loss of manufacturing capacity and innovation drive that has resulted from a declining human population, to increase per-capita carbon output and thereby limit carbon loading decline overall. They are, of course, urging 24/7/365 usage of these devices.
“Our transportation industries are encouraging more leisure travel within the human-habitable zones of this our planet, and are initiating tours to the ruins of civilization in the intolerable zones. They are encouraging bigger and more powerful vehicles with their attendant elevated fuel use, longer commute times, and other means to keep carbon consumption by planes, trains, and automobiles at acceptable levels.
“Our energy industries are working, as feverishly as capital and political will allow, to capture the methane and other high-carbon-output but low density molecules from the anoxic zones of our oceans, and use them to replace our fossil fuel stocks as they run out, to fuel our economy and the atmospheric carbon loading needed to sustain the environment that our economy needs to survive and grow.
“We are not yet winning the climate fight. But we are still in it. Our speakers, and our participating nations, increasingly are choosing unity over bickering, science over witchcraft, and economic common sense over silliness. Climate cooperation is yet alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a livable planet, with a firm resolve to keep a global atmospheric carbon dioxide content at and above 1000 ppm within our grasp. The palm groves of this lovely Big Baird Island resort deserve no less.”
Among the Climate Conference’s few consensus recommendations was a call for dramatic steps to increase the human population, for more and larger families to reverse generations of decline caused by loss of habitat for people and crops, and by the increasing social and financial costs of children. When asked by API for comment, Ange Fercos of the Alaska chapter of JASL had this to say:
When males menstruate, get pregnant, suffer labor pains, nurse, change diapers, and survive bratty child temper tantrums on top of working the 80-hour weeks that the Conference thinks is necessary to keep the climate stable, not to mention pay for the food that is not available to us, then we of the JASL might consider going along with the family policy. Until then, the wannabe slave-drivers of the Climate Conference can suck it.
* API: Amoeba Press International. All Fake News. Always. As You Like It.