America watched a priceless piece of hypocrisy play out in the Amazon and on national television this week, and Jimmy Failla did what real journalists should do: he called it out on air. Fox News highlighted the outrage after hundreds of acres of rainforest were cleared to build an access road into Belém ahead of COP30, a decision that should make every patriot question who this global downtime really serves.
The numbers are staggering and galling: reports put the tree loss in the ballpark of 100,000 felled to make way for a multi-lane highway and summit infrastructure — all in the name of “saving the planet.” This is not just bad optics; it’s the exact living proof conservatives have been warning about for years: virtue-signaling elites bulldozing real-world resources while lecturing the rest of us about sacrifice. Those who make the loudest climate proclamations should be forced to answer why their summit required destroying what they claim to protect.
Of course the political class tried the familiar dodge — local officials insist the road was a preexisting project and not an official federal COP30 endeavor — but that dodge smells like coverup. The COP30 secretariat itself pushed back on direct federal responsibility even as investigative reporting and human-rights monitors documented the deforestation tied to infrastructure expansions around Belém. When the end result is that protected forest becomes a four-lane monument to bureaucratic grandstanding, the excuse falls flat.
Don’t let anyone tell you this is an isolated planning snafu. The whole episode underscores a pattern: global conferences that traffic in moral superiority while leaving wreckage on the ground, local communities losing livelihoods, and taxpayers picking up the tab for the grandstanding. The people who end up hurt are the poor Brazilians whose açaí harvests, hunting grounds, and way of life get crushed under the wheels of a road built for foreign dignitaries and VIP caravans.
If conservatives want to win the argument over energy and the environment, it’s not enough to mock the climate carnival. We need to demand accountability: no more taxpayer-funded pilgrimages that destroy habitat, no more treaties that empower out-of-touch technocrats, and real conservation policies that respect property rights and deliver measurable results. America should champion practical stewardship — not hypocritical pageantry that sacrifices trees for a photo op.
So the next time the left lectures Americans about reducing our footprint, ask them, weather or not, who actually benefits when their climate crusade clears a rainforest. Patriots know the answer: not the planet, not the poor, and certainly not the taxpayers who will be left holding the environmental bill.
