AMY GOODMAN: In addition to Yeb Saño, speaking to us from the 30th U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil, we’re joined here in New York by the U.N. climate — by Nina Lakhani, a senior climate justice reporter for The Guardian US. Her latest piece, out today, “Climate disasters displaced 250 million people in past 10 years, UN report finds.” She’s also been reporting on the role of fossil fuel lobbyists at the climate summit.

Nina Lakhani, thanks so much for being back with us. We have spoken with you at climate summits in the past. But you have this explosive piece, “How thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists got access to UN climate talks — and then kept drilling.” You say more than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to U.N. climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion. Explain exactly what you found.

NINA LAKHANI: So, this is research that’s conducted by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, which is a coalition of hundreds of organizations around the world. And what they found is, in the last four years, more than 5,350 lobbyists, representing fossil fuel companies, trade associations and other organizations representing oil, gas and coal, have been given access to the climate talks. This far outnumbers the negotiators and the delegations that are present from most countries, right?

And it also excludes all of the lobbyists sent to represent other big polluting industries or industries that benefit from fossil fuel extraction, like Big Agriculture, like mining, Big Tech, finance, and also excludes the fossil fuel lobbyists or the executives who are on official delegations.

So, why does this matter? So, these companies have long said, and the UNFCCC has agreed, that they need a seat at the table, that they’re part of the solution. They’re there with technology. They want to make a transition. This research shows that is just absolutely not true. Just 90 of the oil, gas and coal companies that sent lobbyists in the last four years are responsible for almost 60% of the oil and gas that was drilled last year, and responsible for almost two-thirds of the short-term oil and gas expansion projects that are about to start extracting and exploration.

And on that second figure, you know, if they all go ahead, they will drill the equivalent of enough oil to coat the landmass of seven European countries entirely, including France, Germany and Denmark. So, you know, these companies are sending lobbyists in order to block climate action. This is climate obstruction at work. They’re there to delay meaningful climate action, which every country in the world is obliged to do under international law. And they’re there to promote false solutions, false solutions like carbon-based — carbon markets, carbon capture and storage — these market-based solutions which are not going to save the planet.

You know, we know from all the science out there, and we now know that under international law, every single country in the world, whether they’re a member of the Paris Agreement or not, are obliged under law to stop fossil fuel extraction, to stop licenses, to stop subsidies, and every country has a legal obligation to regulate these private companies that operate within their borders. And a failure to do so is a breach of international law.

AMY GOODMAN: And you say the true reach of fossil fuel tentacles is undoubtedly deeper, as the lobbyist data excludes executives and other company representatives on official country delegations. You particularly single out United Arab Emirates, Russia and Azerbaijan. Explain.

NINA LAKHANI: Yeah, I mean, a whole bunch of countries will include in their official delegations executives from some of the biggest corporations. So, they are there in these secret, country-to-country, state-to-state-level negotiations, making climate policy. You know, this is the 30th year of these climate talks, and, you know, countries have absolutely failed to take the climate action necessary that science tells us that we need to take and that Indigenous people and frontline communities have been telling us that we need to take for decades now, right? We need to stop fossil fuel extraction. We need to phase out fossil fuels. We need to cut subsidies. We need to cut consumption.

And these executives having a seat at the table, when actually climate-vulnerable companies — countries, sorry, cannot actually attend in big numbers because of the huge costs and other barriers involved, is completely outrageous. And they do it because it enables them to keep drilling. It enables them to block climate action that we need to take in order to come off fossil fuels.

AMY GOODMAN: And two of those countries, in the case of UAE and Azerbaijan, they hosted the COP summits.

NINA LAKHANI: Yeah, absolutely. In Azerbaijan last year, there was more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists present. That was more, like, many more, than 10 of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world had in their delegations, right? I mean, every year, it’s getting worse rather than better. And honestly, the response from the U.N. is absolutely — like, it’s bonkers. You know, I mean, they said to me, “We can’t change how — we can’t solve this problem overnight, just like we can’t solve the climate crisis overnight.”

Well, actually, they could. They could just ban fossil fuel lobbyists and all other lobbyists from polluting industries attending the U.N. climate summits. That’s not a hard thing to do. You know, we have more information about who’s going, but that’s not enough. Like, they need to just — they just need to get these polluters out of the negotiations, so that climate action can actually be taken.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve also written a really important piece, “'Existential and urgent': what impact will ICJ” — the International Court of Justice — “climate ruling have on Cop30?” This also goes to the issue of loss and damage, which will bring us back to Yeb Saño, because the Philippines is the host of the — of who’s in charge of loss and damage. Explain it all.

NINA LAKHANI: Yeah, so, the Loss and Damage Fund, which is a fund that some of the island nations and other vulnerable countries have been campaigning for for decades now, but the wealthy polluting countries have blocked, was finally, two years ago, created. And this is a fund that has been managed out of the Philippines, which is an extremely climate-vulnerable country, as we’ve heard already. And the agreement was that, you know, the wealthy polluting nations would contribute to this fund to help pay for the irreversible loss and damage that countries are already experiencing.

Two years on, only $750 million has been actually, like, agreed or has been pledged to that fund. We need hundreds of billions of dollars every single year. I mean, look at Melissa, you know, in the Caribbean. I mean, huge swathes of mountains in Jamaica have had all of their trees — all of the trees swept, you know, like, just knocked down by the heavy winds. I mean, it’s billions of dollars of damage just in Jamaica.

AMY GOODMAN: We had a Jamaican — a British Jamaican activist on after Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica, and she said they shouldn’t be named after women and men, like Hurricane Melissa, which sounds so innocent. These hurricanes should be named for oil companies.

NINA LAKHANI: Yeah, Hurricane Exxon, Hurricane Chevron, Hurricane Petrobras. Absolutely. You know, I mean, these storms — we’ve seen the one in Philippines over the weekend, Melissa, but so many more — they are absolutely being turbocharged by the increase in temperatures in the atmosphere and the ocean. There is no doubt about that, right?

And coming back to the ICJ, really, so, the ICJ, in July, issued a landmark advisory opinion, which made it abundantly clear that every single state in the world is legally bound to take climate action with due diligence, to do everything in their powers to mitigate, to remedy and to prevent the climate crisis, which they said presents an urgent and existential threat to the planet, and therefore, humanity. This is a universal obligation, so the U.S. leaving the Paris Agreement, I’m sorry, it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t make the U.S. not bound under international law to take meaningful climate action.

And, you know, it went really far. It was the furthest any sort of court has ever gone on fossil fuels. It said that every single — you know, the states have a legal obligation under international law to stop fossil fuel extraction, consumption, licenses and subsidies, and that duty, that legal duty, extends to the regulation of corporations that are operating within their borders.

A failure to do so amounts to an international wrongful act that could be subject to legal consequences. And so, why does this matter, right? So, every time you hear of a fossil fuel expansion plan — we had one just recently in Brazil by Petrobras, which is a majority state-owned oil company. They’re going to start exploring off the — in the ocean.

AMY GOODMAN: Brazil’s.

NINA LAKHANI: In Brazil, right. That is a violation of international law, right? The law is very clear that fossil fuel expansion has to stop, right? And it’s up to Brazil as a state to regulate the companies operating in their boundaries. Now, what Petrobras said to me is, “We go to COP“ — Petrobras have sent dozens of lobbyists, by the way, to COP in the last few years. “We want to be there. We want to be following energy policy. We want to be part of the solution.” And how is this a solution, you know, starting drilling close to the mouth of the Amazon, which is home to 10% of the world’s biodiversity?

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, Yeb Saño, in Belém, where the U.N. COP is happening, COP30, global emissions have nearly doubled in the last 33 years. Your country, the Philippines, is the home of the Loss and Damage Fund, which has hardly been funded. You’re the former chief climate negotiator for the Philippines. Now you’re a leading climate activist. What gives you hope? And what does it mean to say that this summit is an action summit?

YEB SAÑO: I like that you refer to the word “hope.” I think that is something that I wake up every morning with, which is not a choice, but to carry hope, because — and that’s what I wish I could bring into the conversation here, including many faith communities that have come here to Belém. You know, COPs — and now we’re in the 30th edition of this. I see a lot of young people here. And world leaders have been negotiating on climate change longer than these young people have been alive. That’s very striking. That’s very telling in how this process has been for three decades.

I have no illusion, Amy. I have no illusion that the 30th edition of the COP could deliver something groundbreaking and something that would change the landscape of climate action just because we are in Brazil, just because we are in Belém, the gateway of the Amazon. But this is a place where, you know I can say — you earlier asked what has changed over the course of the past decade. I can say that the movement has evolved, and it’s become much stronger. And this is where the climate — the international climate movement converges every year, and this is where we could show the power of people, show the power of communities, of Indigenous communities, of young people, of women, of faith communities, who are doing a lot on the ground at the grassroots in many parts of the world.

So, I have firm belief that hope is possible and that we can drive ambition and push political leaders by mobilizing the necessary political pressure that can overcome, as you have just — as we have just been hearing, the fossil fuel lobby, the influence, the conflict of influence and the vested interests that are almost always at play in these negotiations.

AMY GOODMAN: Yeb Saño, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former chief climate negotiator for the Philippines, now chair of the Laudata Si’ Movement, formerly known as the Global Catholic Climate Movement, also executive director of SIKAT, a grassroots environmental community development organization in the Philippines.

Finally, we just have 30 seconds, Nina Lakhani. Your latest piece talks about the hundreds of millions of refugees, climate refugees, around the world, as Europe and the United States shuts down their borders, the most — the countries most responsible for climate change stopping refugees from fleeing the effects of climate change, the intense typhoons and hurricanes and more.

NINA LAKHANI: Yeah, the U.N. Refugee Agency’s new report shows that there’s been an approximate — an average of 70,000 displacements every single day due to climate disasters over the last 10 years, and many of the countries that are hosting climate-displaced people are also countries who are facing conflict, right?

So, just to bring this back to COP30, you know, 25 U.N. special rapporteurs are releasing a statement this morning that will basically say that a failure to take really strong action towards the end of fossil fuels and banning fossil fuel lobbyists will absolutely be the end of the credibility of this process, that has really failed for the last 30 years to do what it needs to do to prevent climate disasters that are causing, you know, huge amounts of displacement around the world now.

AMY GOODMAN: Nina Lakhani, senior climate justice reporter for The Guardian US. We’ll link to your recent articles at democracynow.org. Democracy Now! will be reporting from the U.N. climate summit from Belém, Brazil, throughout next week.

Coming up, Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School. He has a new book out. It’s called Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Take a Minute” by K’naan in our Democracy Now! studio.