Big Polluters have overrun the climate talks. It’s time to kick them out.
Secretary General of the United Nations
Whether our backyards have corn or bodegas, forests or freeways most of us believe that people, not corporations, should be calling the shots when it comes to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the future of the planet and all life on it.
But right now spaces that should be run by and for the people, from the White House to the U.N. climate talks, are in some stage of hostile corporate takeover. The climate talks SHOULD be a place where the world comes together to address the climate crisis. But instead, from the start of the talks, Big Polluters like Exxon and Chevron have influenced and undermined this space — from infiltrating the space with industry representatives to spreading disinformation and weakening measures in the treaty.
Nearly 60 percent of the oil and gas in the world last year was produced by just 90 (of the 180) corporations that attended the climate talks over the past four years. Why do these fossil fuel shills keep showing up to these treaty meetings? Because they have huge vested interests in keeping the status quo—in shaping policies that allow them to keep extracting and polluting.
We can’t let that continue.
Join us in calling on Secretary General Gueterres to Kick Big Polluters Out of the climate treaty negotiations, and crack down on fossil fuel industry influence through the U.N.
Sponsored by
To:
Secretary General of the United Nations
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Secretary-General to the United Nations:
For over three decades, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has failed to deliver the climate action needed to justly address the climate crisis, let alone keep global temperature rise to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius as promised in the Paris Agreement ten years ago.Â
The primary reason for this climate action failure is no secret. Big Polluters like the fossil fuel industry — the very same actors that have knowingly caused the climate crisis and that consistently spend billions to block action to address it — continue to be granted outsized presence, access, and influence to key climate policymaking spaces like the UNFCCC. As a result, they maintain a carefully orchestrated stranglehold on climate action, which consequently continues to fall way short of the strong and just global response we know we urgently need.
Research released ahead of the COP30 climate talks by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition shows that more than 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists attended COP26-COP29 — representing 859 fossil fuel lobbyist organizations, 180 of which are oil and gas corporations. Just 90 of these oil and gas corporations are responsible for nearly 60% of global oil and gas production in 2024 — enough to cover more than the entire area of Spain. Their expansion plans would produce enough oil to cover mainland France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway combined.
Year after year, fossil fuel industry lobbyists continue to make up some of the largest delegations at global climate negotiations, consistently outnumbering delegates from the most climate vulnerable nations time and time again. Yet clearly, the fossil fuel industry cares about profit above all else, even people and the planet. But its lobbyists are actively allowed to roam the halls of climate action without any protections in place to ensure they cannot undermine the urgent need to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
The world is looking to you to lead the way on strong, just, urgent climate action. This requires acknowledging that climate action at the UN and around the world will continue to fail as long as the fossil fuel industry is allowed a seat at the table. But more than acknowledging this, it requires you to take concrete action to address and weed out this underhanded influence of the fossil fuel industry.
At COP30 in Belém, we look to you to tell the world what can and must be done to end Big Polluters’ stranglehold on climate action. And we look to you to chart the roadmap to a fossil-fuel-free world. There is no time to waste.