The United Nations climate conference opened Monday in the Brazilian Amazon with pleas for the world to keep up the fight against global warming, even as the United States turns its back.

Feeble progress toward weaning off fossil fuels and cutting planet-warming emissions have opened fault lines between countries in Belem, the hot and sticky city on the edge of the rainforest hosting the two-week COP30 summit.

"It's time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva thundered in his opening address, which followed a traditional performance from Indigenous people in feathered headpieces.

He pointedly slammed those who "spread fear, attack institutions, science, and universities."

Weighing on the talks is the absence of the United States, the worl

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