The Climate Diplomat: A Personal History of the COP Conferences

by Peter Betts

'In some of its best passages reads like a briskly paced thriller' - Fiona Harvey, The Guardian

'There is nobody better on climate change and international negotiations' - Rt. Hon. Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

'I have nothing but the deepest admiration for his incredible contribution over the years and his continued commitment to climate action in the face of great personal challenge' - Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC 2010-2016

Drawing on over three decades of experience as the UK and EU's lead climate negotiator, Peter Betts paints a warts-and-all picture of how world leaders and diplomats tackle the COP negotiations, providing a ringside seat at pivotal moments, such as the run-up to Copenhagen (COP15), the Cartagena Dialogue, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (COP21) and Glasgow (COP26). The Climate Diplomat is a unique insider account of the discussions that have shaped and continue to shape the future of our planet, but it also describes how the major powers such as the US, the EU and China negotiate with one another.

Reflecting on his life's work in the final months of his life, Betts provides a revealing portrait of international politics at the highest level with key insights into the motivations of all the major players. He also gives a detailed history of COP, explaining how this controversial and often embattled forum has been crucial in altering the future of our planet's ecosystem.

Genres: Politics, Environment, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

Reviews

[George Pickthorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book next to Todd Stern’s seem like an incredibly informative primer of the cogs in climate diplomacy - even if the outputs of those gears lead to some depressing headlines.

It would be useful to see what the Chinese and Indian perspectives are or were.

Pete Betts clearly knew what he was doing, he knew the issues and knew his own importance and his limitations. In the end his honest opinions on issues and people make this an excellent account as well as the pretty extraordinary and heartfelt conclusion.

[W.S. Luk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This remarkable insider's look at climate diplomacy through a participant in the COP conferences is a fantastic work of demystification. While engaging honestly with their limitations, Betts ably demonstrates the serious work that goes into these conferences and the positive effects that they can have, as well as challenging myths such as the idea that climate advocacy is a binary conflict between developed and developing nations. THE CLIMATE DIPLOMAT blends this big picture with intimate anecdotes of what it's like to sit with world leaders hashing out legislative details: I particularly enjoyed the description of Nicolas Sarkozy "robotically eating biscuits which he appeared to swallow without chewing".

That said, even for my tastes this is a long and dense book, packed with jargon and with a multi-page list of acronyms in its opening pages. Betts' death from cancer undoubtedly posed a particular challenge for the editorial process, and I sense that the book's editors would've wanted to respect his final wishes for the form of this book; that said, I wonder if it would've been effective to draw from a strategy in Jonathan Haidt's THE ANXIOUS GENERATION and end each chapter with a bullet-point summary of the key results of each COP conference or period of negotiations, allowing us to better understand the trajectory that Betts charts.

[Anna Pérez Català · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had lots of fun reading this book, especially the parts where he describes in detail the climate negotiations before and during Copenhagen and the years towards Paris. It gave me perspective and insights on what happened and the dynamics between countries, which is helpful to understand how they are today. a great book for COP nerds ;)