https://irrationalfear.substack.com/p/cop30-in-belem-the-pinnacle-of-climate
The Pinnacle of Climate Hypocrisy: Prioritizing Fantasies Over Real Human Suffering
DR. MATTHEW WIELICKI
As COP30 kicks off this week in Belém, Brazil, I can’t help but reflect on one of the key moments that soured me on the climate movement entirely. The Pinnacle of Climate Hypocrisy Prioritizing Fantasies Over Real Human Suffering. For years, I’ve watched as well-intentioned environmentalism morphed into a crusade that elevates hypothetical future scenarios over the immediate, tangible suffering of billions. This conference, nestled in a city where raw sewage flows openly into waterways, exemplifies the ultimate hypocrisy: global elites, Western scientists, and politicians jetting in—often on private planes—to lecture the world on reducing emissions, while ignoring the far more pressing environmental crises right under their noses.
It’s this disconnect that pushed me away from the movement I once embraced as an Earth sciences professor. Today, in exile from academia for daring to question the alarmist narrative, I’m more convinced than ever that the legacy of climate activism will be one of neocolonialism disguised as virtue, denying the developing world the infrastructure and cheap, reliable energy that propelled the West forward, all in the name of uncertain futures.
What really turned me off was realizing that billions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, are condemned to decades of unnecessary hardship. We’re telling them to forgo fossil fuels and modern infrastructure because of CO2 emissions, even as they lack basic sanitation, clean water, and electricity. This isn’t environmentalism; it’s a form of control that prioritizes modeled weather in 2100 over people dying today from preventable diseases. The climate movement has killed practical environmentalism by diverting trillions from real solutions to virtue-signaling gestures. And Belém is a stark case study.
The Sewage Crisis in Belém: A Far Greater Threat Than Greenhouse Gases
Belém, the host city for COP30 with a population of over 1.4 million, has one of the worst sanitation records in Brazil. According to recent data from the Instituto Trata Brasil, a nonprofit focused on sanitation, a staggering 80.7% of residents have no access to a sewage network.
Other reports confirm this dire situation: only 20% of the population has household sanitary sewage coverage. This means that for the vast majority, raw sewage is dumped directly into open canals and rivers, including those feeding into the Amazon basin, a significantly more dangerous environmental problem than greenhouse gases.
Imagine attending a global climate summit where delegates discuss showering less or switching to induction stoves and heat pumps, while outside, open sewers run through neighborhoods, contaminating waterways with human waste. Photos from Belém’s favelas and canals paint a grim picture: in areas like the Terra Firme neighborhood, the Tucunduba canal is littered with garbage and raw sewage.
This raw sewage, often mixed with solid garbage due to insufficient waste collection, is directly discharged into the nearest natural waterways, which include rivers, lagoons, and coastal areas.
The health impacts of this raw sewage discharge are devastating and immediate. Exposure to untreated sewage in waterways can cause a range of illnesses, including gastroenteritis from swallowing contaminated water, leading to diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration. Skin infections, ear and eye irritations, and respiratory issues arise from contact or inhalation. More severely, it spreads waterborne diseases like salmonella, hepatitis A, dysentery, cryptosporidiosis, and even hookworm, which causes rashes, anemia, and chronic fatigue.
In ecosystems, it elevates nutrients, leading to algal blooms, depletes oxygen, kills aquatic life, and introduces endocrine disruptors and heavy metals that bioaccumulate up the food chain. For communities relying on surface water, this means literally ingesting pathogens, exacerbating malnutrition and cancer risks.
Yet, as elites convene to pat themselves on the back for emission pledges, they’re blind to this. It’s privilege personified: flying into a poor city near the Amazon to demand sacrifices from those already suffering, without addressing the sewage crisis that’s killing people now.
