From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

The United Nations’ annual climate conference concluded Saturday, and some critics in attendance told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it was a chaotic affair.

After Thursday’s fire forced an evacuation and temporarily halted the talks, COP30 was prolonged by an extra day. Corporate media outlets and green groups critiqued the final agreement reached on Saturday, arguing that it did not do enough to restrict carbon emissions. The environmental groups claimed the resolution departed from COP28’s declaration which called for an end to fossil fuels.

Hosted in Belém, Brazil, COP30 provoked backlash after developers razed the Amazon rainforest ahead of the climate talks and China worked to seize the spotlight in America’s absence. Craig Rucker, co-founder and president of the conservative nonprofit known as the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow,(CFACT) told the DCNF that this year’s UN climate talks were especially chaotic and disorganized.

“I’ve been to 27 of the 30 conferences. … What you see on the ground is just how chaotic it’s gotten. There was a certain chaos in the past, but this was particularly disorganized because they picked a venue that I think was unsuited for all the delegates that were coming in,” Rucker told the DCNF in an interview. “They wanted to emphasize the rainforest, yet hypocritically, they’re chopping them down to accommodate delegates flying in on private jets.”

The UN did not respond to the DCNF’S request for comment.

Rucker and Marc Morano, who publishes CFACT’s ClimateDepot.com, ventured into the Amazon rainforest to investigate the four-lane highway initially reported by BBC in March. Rucker told the DCNF that Brazil was “still cutting and burning. We heard the chainsaws ourselves, and this is something they [the Brazilian state] try to keep [quiet].”

The highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, was shelved multiple times in the past due to environmental concerns but revived as part of a broader push to modernize Belém ahead of COP30, according to the outlet. State officials say the development efforts will leave a lasting legacy, including an expanded airport, new hotels and an ungraded port to accommodate cruise ships.

The Brazilian state denied that the highway was built for the climate conference, noting that plans for the road were underway as early as 2020 — well before Brazil was selected to host COP30, Reuters reported in March.

President Donald Trump sharply criticized the conference for deforesting portions of the Amazon to ease travel for environmentalist attendees. The U.S. did not send an official delegation this year.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse attended the talks, where they denounced the Trump administration’s energy policies and absence.

A top United Nations official reportedly directed Brazilian authorities to address concerns including leaky light fixtures, sweltering heat and lackluster security at the conference, according to Bloomberg News. Days later, the fire broke out.

Morano also documented water pouring from vents, and Rucker told the DCNF that attendees were not allowed to flush toilet paper as the venue “didn’t have a septic system.”

Rucker also recalled what he described as elitism, noting that delegates were in the “blue zone” while other attendees and indigenous groups were relegated to the “green zone.”

“The blue zone is where the official delegates go, the people that are from Spain, Portugal, Brazil. … And these are the people that make the decisions,” Rucker said. “The indigenous people, they say, don’t have a voice allowed in there. That’s partially why they crashed it.”

Though COP30 did host several events featuring indigenous voices, some native groups stormed the COP30 venue the first week, demanding their voice be heard by the UN.

Rucker told the DCNF that China seemed to have become a “new leader” on the environmentalism and green energy front at the climate conference, though the oriental nation is “pumping out with two coal plants per week.”

Recent media reports have hailed China as a giant in building out “renewables,” though China is far from dependent on intermittent resources like solar and wind as it also churns out new coal plants and is the world’s top emitter.

“They genuinely looked at China as the world leader on climate change,” Rucker noted, branding it as “totally bizarre.”

Rucker recalled that upon the entrance of the “blue zone,” there was a “very impressive Chinese booth.”

Additionally, a statue demeaning Trump stood outside COP30, according to Reuters, as well as a horned jaguar-dragon hybrid statue with its hands gripping the globe. The fanged construction purportedly represented China and Brazil partnering to protect the rainforest.

“The statues are purely political statements: one symbolizes how communism is alive and well in Brazil and China, and the other is a misguided attempt to shame or critique Trump,” Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute Sterling Burnett told the DCNF. “Trump’s promotion of fossil-fuel development and broader use — especially encouraging developing countries to tap into affordable energy — will do more to help children in poor countries than all the climate agreements and green energy scams combined.”

MxM News

The Trump administration’s push to end the war in Ukraine accelerated Tuesday as Army Secretary Dan Driscoll sat down with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, armed with a newly streamlined peace framework hammered out over the weekend by American and Ukrainian negotiators. According to a U.S. official who spoke with the New York Post, Ukraine has signed off on the revised outline — a 19-point plan that replaces the far broader 28-point draft Driscoll delivered to President Volodymyr Zelensky last week. “The Ukrainians have agreed to the peace deal,” the official said Tuesday, describing only “minor details” left to finalize.

Two people involved in the discussions said the most explosive demand in the original outline — that Kyiv cede all of the Donbas region to Moscow — has been dropped entirely. Decisions about territorial boundaries will instead be left to President Trump and Zelensky to settle directly during a planned meeting in the United States. Ukraine’s national security adviser Rustem Umerov wrote on X early Tuesday that Kyiv hopes to send Zelensky to Washington “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump.”

Driscoll, who arrived in Abu Dhabi late Monday, has been in round-the-clock meetings with a Russian delegation to test the new plan. “The talks are going well and we remain optimistic,” Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Tolbert said in a statement Tuesday, adding that Driscoll is “closely synchronized with the White House and the U.S. interagency as these talks progress.”

The White House had previously pushed for Kyiv to sign off on the 28-point framework by Thanksgiving, though Trump emphasized Saturday that it was never a “final offer,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday it remains a “living, breathing document.” Multiple American and Ukrainian officials said the original version read like a Russian “wish list” and has been heavily rewritten. “Very few things are left from the original version,” Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told the Financial Times on Monday, saying negotiators had now built “a solid body of convergence.”

Even as diplomats pressed ahead Monday night into early Tuesday, Moscow launched one of its heaviest barrages in weeks against Kyiv and other cities. Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed and dozens injured after Russia fired 22 missiles and more than 460 drones overnight, knocking out water, heat, and electricity in parts of the capital. Video posted on Telegram showed a nine-story apartment block in the Dniprovskyi district engulfed in flames, and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 20 people were hospitalized. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the strikes targeted military-industrial and energy facilities and were retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on civilian sites inside Russia.

A second wave of Russian strikes Tuesday killed four more people in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynyi district, according to the city administration. Emergency officials also reported injuries — including two children — in the Odesa region, where Russian forces hit energy and port facilities. Moldova and Romania said stray drones crossed into their airspace overnight, with one landing on each country’s territory.

Ukraine continues hitting back. A drone strike overnight in Russia’s Rostov region killed three people and injured eight others in the city of Taganrog, according to regional governor Yuri Slyusar. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down 249 Ukrainian drones across several regions and over Crimea — the fourth-largest such attack on record, according to an Associated Press tally.

Driscoll’s meetings Tuesday mark the most serious push yet toward a negotiated settlement since the war began nearly three years ago. Whether Moscow signs on to the trimmed-down plan — and whether Putin accepts Trump’s and Zelensky’s direct role in resolving territorial claims — may determine if this moment becomes the breakthrough both sides say they want or another false start in a grinding conflict that has reshaped global politics.