Posturing. Juan Luis Pozo, December 2025

We are ending 2025 and we could say, without exaggeration, that it has been the worst year in the fight against the climate emergency. In my particular case, it has also been the worst year of my life, because of an accident that keeps me bedridden in a hospital bed. A situation that, paradoxically, has given me time to reflect on the keys that have made 2025 that black year in the face of the climate emergency. And those keys are none other than “climate posturing”.

And no, at this point it is not naïve to think that the market conditions the way in which companies, organizations and society in general face, at all times, the fight against the climate emergency.

In 2025 we have experienced climatic episodes as adverse – or more – than those recorded in previous years, for example, it has been one of the hottest summers since records began, which has favoured a disproportionate increase in the forest fires that have devastated us. Or, outside our borders, the worst hurricane in the history of the Caribbean, with winds of more than 295 km/h.

Climate change is evidence that no one can deny. Its adverse effects, its intensity and the seriousness of its consequences break records with a severity unknown to date: negative records in human deaths, destruction, material damage and absolute desolation.

All this occurs in a context in which the cycles of these phenomena accelerate vertiginously, while the recovery cycles are lengthened to the point that the affected areas never recover before a new episode occurs. A continuous cycle of destruction and pain.

In that sense, I hope I am totally wrong, it may be that all the damage caused by the DANA of Valencia on October 29, 2024, unfortunately, will not be restored or recovered before a similar event repeats itself with equally devastating consequences, which we have learned and do not affect human lives.

And yet, an increasingly aware society is unable to prevent decision-making from taking place based on “climate posturing“.

And what is climate posturing? If we are all clear about the undeniable reality of climate change, climate posturing is nothing more than the infinite capacity of human beings to put economic interests before essential issues for life, with the simple and plain argument that “it has not yet affected me”.

This logic has been clearly reflected in the division and isolation of 80 countries – responsible for 20% of the planet’s CO₂ emissions – that have hitherto been active in the fight against the climate emergency, compared to a bloc of 117 countries that account for 80% of global emissions and which, at the last COP30 in Belém (Brazil), they have chosen to put in check the foundations of the United Nations in the global defence against the climate emergency. And these countries have managed, in this climate posturing, to make any reference to the end of fossil fuels disappear.

With this COP30, the summits and spaces for consensus necessary to face the climate emergency with guarantees have broken their waters and have ceased to make sense.

If climate posturing prevails, there is no need to continue holding more summits and meetings. Let us then face, from our own social hypocrisy, the expression: “let each stick hold its candle“. But let’s not waste any more time being prophets in a desert that is spreading more and more and we do not want to see, because we are no longer experiencing the climate emergency in an extraordinary way, but in an ordinary way. And our collective hypocrisy leads us to put other interests first, while we continue – and will continue – to play the game of Russian roulette as a society.

A Russian roulette that, without knowing it, we started playing 33 years ago, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. So, the barrel of the revolver had 100 positions and one bullet. Today we have a drum with five positions and a bullet. No matter how brave we think we are, nature – which is wise – will take away one more position from us year after year.

This year we have also witnessed how Europe’s identity crisis has been pointed out by the enemies of our welfare system as a direct consequence of the European position in defence of the fight against the climate emergency. A hoax that, however, has had an immediate effect: fear and paralysis on the part of the European authorities, which have slowed down a large part of the administrative processes opened to move forward on this path.

This misreading has not focused on the root of the problem, but on the form. A way that, although it is true, was suffocating companies and organizations due to excessive bureaucracy. It is no less true that this fear of the abyss and that stage fright have ended up giving wings to a dangerous narrative that argues: that the underlying problem is a lie and that the climate emergency does not exist.

I am not going to describe that fear as the abyss. I just want to reflect, with simple examples, on how difficult it is to face the climate reality when we base it on climate posturing. Until now, companies and organizations have experienced this reality as a sine wave: after the Paris Agreement we were at the top of the wave and we all wanted to be climate leaders; Today we are at the bottom and none of us wants to be. We tear our clothes so as not to continue to be climate references, for fear that this will affect our relations with those who have managed to question the root of the problem and, unfortunately, condition the currents of opinion.

I have attended 6 COPs (Paris, Madrid, Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh, Dubai and Baku). And I remember, the motto of the Madrid summit “It’s time to act”. However, five summits later, far from reacting, we find ourselves at the moment of changing the center of the target, which is now no longer occupied by the deniers, but by the defenders. Just three years ago, attending a COP was a symbol of social and business prestige. Today, if we go, we prefer not to tell it, to prevent the new current of opinion from asking our heads to defend what goes against what climate posturing dictates.

The problem – as in the game of Russian roulette – is that this sine wave will rise again. With one crucial difference: when he does it again, we may have already lost the game.

I end with a clear conclusion: let us have the decency, the shame and, above all, the courage to continue defending that the climate emergency is, and will continue to be, a reality that will end up engulfing us all. And if as a society we want to continue pulling the trigger on this game of Russian roulette, let’s do it. But let’s not forget that the bullet in the drum will sooner rather than later be fired.