Belém, Brazil - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday said Earth cannot sustain humanity's dependence on fossil fuels, and without confronting this reality, the climate fight will be lost.

The leftist leader spoke at a pre-COP30 summit in the Brazilian Amazon, where other heads of state and government implored all nations to start weaning off the burning of coal, oil, and gas responsible for most of planet-heating pollution.

Evidence of dangerous warming has never been clearer: the decade since the Paris Agreement has been the hottest on record, marked by intensifying hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires.

Lula said tackling the urgent question over the future of energy would determine "success or failure in the battle against climate change," he added.

"Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years," Lula told world leaders in Belém where the UN climate talks are taking place.

Brazil has stressed that each country would pursue its own course to "transition away from fossil fuels" – a pact made by all nations at a previous COP in Dubai in 2023.

Lula is presiding over the world's top climate negotiations just weeks after his government approved new oil drilling in the Amazon region.

Earlier this week, he told AFP and other outlets that "it's not easy" for countries to reduce fossil fuels, but that the subject could be approached through a "roadmap" developed at COP30.

The absence of leaders from the world's biggest polluters, including the US, where President Donald Trump has dismissed climate science as a "con job," cast a shadow over talks, but also catalyzed calls for greater mobilization.

Rwanda's environment minister Bernadette Arakwiye told delegates that they face a stark choice.

"We can continue with incremental progress while the planet burns, or we can rise to meet the scale of this crisis," she said. "The fossil fuel era is drawing to a close. We must now ensure the transition is just, inclusive and equitable."