Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer caused something of a stir this week when it was announced that he will attend the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next month.

The question of whether he would travel to Belem had been left open for many months, not just because of scrutiny the event has been under given where it is being staged, and not just because of the political pressure the US has been putting on other countries to roll back on environmental policies. But because, inevitably, his political colleagues and advisers have had concerns about his domestic priorities taking precedence, given the upcoming Budget and a tumultuous period for the Government.

His eventual decision to go drove headlines. The Financial Times reported that “Starmer’s decision draws a clear line between his governing Labour party and the Conservatives, with the main opposition party taking a more sceptical approach to tackling climate change under Kemi Badenoch.”

Predictably, right-leaning media focused on the distance the PM will have to travel to be at the conference, with the Daily Telegraph leading with the geographic fact that he will have to fly more than 9,000 miles and the Daily Mail preferring the mathematical approach in reporting that it would be his 40th foreign trip since last summer’s election.

The Government is attempting to tie together Sir Keir’s decision to be in Brazil with UK economic priorities and related policies, saying that it was part of restoring Britain to a position of being “a global leader for climate action and green growth.”

As this BBC explainer points out, this year’s COP may have suffered criticism given the venue is a relatively remote part of Brazil that is difficult to get to, and concerns about accommodation availability may hit delegate numbers, but it is also a crucial juncture for the United Nations initiative. COP30 is the deadline for countries to submit their updated national climate plans, known as NDCs, under the Paris Agreement.

The geopolitical factor casting something of a shadow over COP is, of course, the US Government’s attitude to climate action and the negative noise that President Trump has created. It has still not confirmed whether it will have a representative in Belem, though it looks unlikely.

Yet according to a recent Guardian editorial, the US climate stance could even embolden other world leaders to “sketch out the blueprint of a possible new world order without the US, even if Washington was the architect of the old one.”

And another strong recent opinion piece, this time in the FT, even suggested that market forces could drive through sustainable change despite geopolitical tussles, giving rise to a “new ESG” linked to commercially self-interested energy pricing, international security and economic growth.

With COP30 now on the near horizon, the conversation around it may become less about who attends and what political leaders think, and more about corporate investment and raw economics.