A Media Matters review has found that corporate broadcast and major cable news networks dedicated relatively little coverage to the recent COP30 summit in Brazil, the world’s highest decision-making process on climate change — though reporting by CNN and MSNBC did highlight some key narratives related to the current state of global climate action. 

COP30 — which proceeded without an official U.S. delegation — opened on November 6 while the main sessions got underway on November 10 and concluded on November 21. 

This year’s conference sought to address numerous issues, creating a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and a landmark declaration on the threat of disinformation in addressing climate change and a newly proposed initiative to reduce deforestation.

As in previous years, the gathering was met with protests by Indigenous and civil society groups calling for stronger climate action. This year, although 2,500 Indigenous people gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the summit, only 14% (360 individuals) received credentials to attend negotiations. (No members were part of Brazil’s official delegation.) By contrast, fossil fuel lobbyists were overrepresented at the COP30 climate negotiations to the chagrin of climate organizers and Indigenous climate activists. In one demonstration on November 14, indigenous groups blocked the entrance to the conference and demanded to speak to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Reporting on the protests by TV news outlets was sparse, while the attendance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was widely covered. CNN and MSNBC discussed how the U.S. is falling behind in the clean energy technology race while China gains ground. Additionally, 22% of segments mentioned Bill Gates’ controversial climate memo to world leaders. Meanwhile, Fox News coverage attacked Newsom and undermined climate science.  

• All together, corporate broadcast outlets and major cable news networks aired 3 hours and 5 minutes of coverage related to COP30 from November 6-21. This represents a decrease compared to coverage of COP28, which was covered for a combined 5 hours and 42 minutes — but better than the 57 minutes of coverage that COP29 received (which was likely in part due to the conference kicking off just a few days after the 2024 presidential election). 

• Major cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News — combined aired just over 3 hours of coverage about the summit. CNN led with 1 hour and 39 minutes of coverage, followed by Fox News with 1 hour and 11 minutes, and MSNBC with just 13 minutes. Fox News’ coverage, however, was rife with mockery, ad hominem attacks, and climate change dismissal.  

• Corporate broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — aired only 2 minutes of total coverage about COP30 during the study period. 

• Of the 60 overall segments related to COP30, 31 (or 52%) mentioned Gavin Newsom while only 10 (or 17%) mentioned the mass demonstrations by civil society and indigenous groups. Notably, 15 of Fox News’ 18 segments mentioned Newsom.

National broadcast news’ coverage of the annual global climate summit hit a new low this year with just over 2 minutes of airtime dedicated to the conference. In 2024, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 3 minutes of coverage across 2 segments about COP29. The networks aired 16 minutes of coverage across 11 segments on COP28 in 2023, and in 2022 they aired 10 segments for a total of 18 minutes about COP27.

Two brief headline reports, one from ABC and one from CBS, focused on the protests at the conference. Much of the broadcast coverage focused on a fire that broke out in one of the convention halls on November 20 — though none of the coverage of the fire offered more details about the climate conference.

For example, as reported by NBC’s Today on November 21: “Some chaotic moments at a climate summit in Brazil when a fire erupted inside the pavilion. … Massive flames and thick smoke sending attendees running for safety there.” 

For at least the fourth year in a row, CNN significantly outpaced its cable news counterparts Fox News and MSNBC, this year covering the conference for over an hour and a half — more than the other two networks combined. 

CNN’s coverage of COP30 featured several experts, including Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the 2015 Paris climate accord negotiations; Margaret Barry, a climate litigation fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University; Kim Cobb, climate scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society; as well as former vice president and climate advocate Al Gore. 

A key narrative through CNN’s coverage was the state of the clean energy transition and China’s role in it. 

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on November 8, Figueres explained some of the progress since the landmark Paris agreement in 2015: “Ten years ago, one in every hundred vehicles that were being sold was electric. Now, we have one in five. We have two times as much investment into renewable energy as we do into fossil fuels. Solar has been deployed 15 times faster than we ever expected 10 years ago, and on and on and on. There are many proof points that there is a new economy rising.”

Amanpour also interviewed Al Gore, who pointed out the cost of the U.S. ceding the clean energy economy to others. 

“China is now exporting to other countries more green technology like electric vehicles and windmills and solar,” Gore said. “The value of their green tech exports now far exceeds the exports from the United States to the rest of the world. … We’re seeing this transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and these exciting new technologies that are pollution-free, they create three times as many jobs per dollar spent compared to the old dirty fossil fuels, and that’s where the economic future is.” 

Climate scientist Kim Cobb made a similar argument on CNN Newsroom With Fredricka Whitfield: 

“China, of course, [is] transitioning its economy very, very quickly to clean energy sources. About 84% of the demand last year in China for electricity was met by clean energy sources. They are owning EVs, batteries, and solar cells to the tune of 78% of global manufacturing taking place in China for a $2 trillion industry. So right now what we’re looking at is China taking a very bold leadership role and charting its clean energy future. The U.S., in the meantime, swimming very much upstream against the global currents of deployed renewables, which are cheaper than fossil fuels right now.”

While MSNBC covered the climate conference for roughly 13 minutes, its coverage included similar narratives about clean energy. On his November 16 show, host Ali Velshi noted: “Now, in America's absence, China is stepping up as a global leader in climate science. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported last week that China's carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months straight. Part of that is attributable to a record amount of renewable energy expansion in China. In 2024, the country installed 333 gigawatts of solar power capacity — that's more than the rest of the world combined.”

Of the 18 segments related to COP30 on Fox News, 15 mentioned Gavin Newsom. And while the vast majority of coverage focused on attacking the California governor, Fox personalities also used the conference to mock climate activists — dedicating at least 3 segments to making fun of a group of Canadian doctors who performed a song about transitioning away from fossil fuels — and to undermine climate science.

“This thing is over, the climate scam,” Fox host Jesse Watters said. “It's like DEI — It's done. We tried it, it didn't work.” 

Discussing COP30 earlier in the same segment, Greg Gutfeld declared that the “climate agenda has been fully discredited” and that “the climate computer models have been shown to be corrupt.” He went on to falsely claim, “They are wrong on predicting everything from the temperature increases to the snow or ice melting.” 

Laura Ingraham announced that scientists’ warnings on climate change have been “total scams.”

The network also hosted its usual round-up of climate contrarians and skeptics including Marc Morano, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and Victor Davis Hanson, and Fox coverage continued to cite the controversial October 28 climate memo from Bill Gates to global leaders ahead of COP30 to suggest that climate change is no longer considered a crisis requiring immediate action. 

In an interview with Lomborg, who frequently appears on Fox to downplay climate change, The Journal Editorial Report host Paul Gigot quipped, “First, let me ask you your reaction to the change of heart by Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire who has long been a climate scold and talked about climate in apocalyptic terms. And now I have to say — his recent conversion, he sounds like you.”

“I think what Bill Gates is really saying is something reasonable,” Lomborg agreed. “Talk about how you think about climate — he’s saying sure, it’s a problem, but it’s not the end of the world.”

In reality, 2025 is set to be the “second or third warmest year on record,” the World Meteorological Organization reports. The warmest year overall remains 2024, which was likely “the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.”

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC as well as all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for any of the terms “climate,” “global warming,” “COP30,” “COP 30,” “Climate Change Conferences,” “Conference of the Parties,” “UN,” “U.N.,” or “United Nations” within close proximity of any of the terms “conference,” “summit,” “meeting,” “Brazil,” “Belem,” or “Newsom” from November 6, 2025, when leaders first convened in Belem, through November 21, 2025, when the climate conference concluded.

We timed segments, which we defined as Instances when the COP30 climate conference in Brazil was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of COP30. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed COP30 with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned COP30 without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about COP30 scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.