Brazilian president underlines need to reduce emissions as Turkey set to host next year’s summit
On Wednesday evening I joined a crowd of journalists, including my colleague Fiona Harvey, veteran of many Cops, to wait outside a plenary room in the artificially Baltic surroundings of the Cop30 conference centre.
Rumour had it that the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had earlier arrived at the UN climate summit, would soon emerge to speak to journalists. What exactly we would do if he did emerge was unclear.
There was no guarantee that we, out of the several hundred journalists who had gathered to catch a glimpse of Lula, would even get close. And even if we did, neither of us spoke enough Portuguese to quiz him on the finer points of international climate politics.
But then, without warning, some members of the press to our right began peeling off, moving back down the huge grey tented corridors that snake through the centre. Others nervously equivocated, then began to follow, first at a stride, then at a jog, then a sprint, whooping and hollering.
