The construction of a major highway deep in the Amazon rainforestThe fact that it crossed a protected area has sparked international controversy due to its alleged connection with the UN summit against climate change This year's COP30, being held in Brazil. Regional authorities responsible for the project claim it has nothing to do with COP30, but the fact is that the highway under construction—which has deforested a 13-kilometer-long strip of land—will carry a good portion of the 50,000 summit participants to the host city, Belém do Pará.

It has been almost ten years since the world met in Paris and finally agreed to take climate disaster prevention seriously. But while there is a consensus on the structural economic reforms needed to transform sectors like energy, transport, and agriculture, the pace of investment is insufficient. On the contrary, governments are struggling to provide an adequate response to an increasingly evident and severe climate and ecological crisis. Many governments have proposed strong measures against climate change, but these often generate social backlash, as they are perceived as unfair and inequitable. Many see policies that pit the old against the young, cities against the countryside, or the Global North against the Global South. These controversies find fertile ground on social media, where they thrive and degenerate into a hell of misinformation, inflammatory rhetoric, and polarization.