United Nations Reports

Rebel News sent Chief Reporter Sheila Gunn Reid and videographer Kian Simone into the heart of the UN’s climate summit in Belém, Brazil — and they returned with the stories, footage, and firsthand proof that shatter the UN’s carefully curated narrative.

From the moment Sheila and Kian stepped off the plane — greeted by airport ads scolding “fossil fuel executives” while more than 55,000 activists, bureaucrats and global elites flew in (many by private jet) — to the moment they wrapped up their coverage outside the locked gates of the conference, one theme never changed: this summit demanded sacrifice from ordinary people while exempting the climate aristocracy from its own rules.

What we exposed in Belém

At the start of the campaign, we promised to show you what really happens around the UN’s climate conference. Here is a brief summary of Sheila's reports from Belém:

Hypocrisy at the arrivals gate: Sheila landed after 24 hours of travel to billboards scolding “fossil fuel executives” — while 55,000 delegates burned mountains of jet fuel to attend. “Nothing says ‘protect the Amazon’ like a climate soiree that could have been a Zoom call.”
The Amazon “climate highway”: Sheila and Kian uncovered a 13-km road carved through untouched rainforest — a raw construction scar revived solely to ease VIP traffic, complete with drone bans and guards ordered to shoot drones down.
Floating hotels & raw sewage: Cruise ships brought in to house delegates sat beside pipes dumping untreated sewage into the Amazon. Meanwhile, fleets of buses and Ubers ferried attendees daily as they lectured everyone else to “cut back.”
“Fart Park” & fake eco trees: A showcase park was built directly over a sewage canal, with flowers dying in the effluent and metal “eco trees” installed where real trees had been cut down — a photo-op masquerading as sustainability.
Airport turned private jet hub: Belém’s main airport was upgraded to handle the onslaught of VIP jets, with delegates stepping onto idling, heavily air-conditioned diesel buses while demanding ordinary Canadians drive less.
Environmental injustice in Vila da Barca: In a poor favela, Sheila and Kian found UN construction debris, sewage runoff and discarded UN signage — evidence that the climate elite were quietly dumping their waste on a powerless community.
The summit fortress & censorship push: Despite “accreditation,” Rebel News was kept out of key areas as the UN rolled out a new plan urging governments and NGOs to target so-called “misinformation” and “denialism” — while shutting skeptical journalists out.

What we learned from this mission

Looking back on the full trip, some clear lessons emerge:

Climate hypocrisy has real victims. The UN’s “green” spectacle isn’t just silly or wasteful; it pushes environmental costs onto communities like Vila da Barca while delegates pose for photos beside fake trees and designer parks built on top of sewage.
The stage-managed summit hides the real story. Inside the “Green Zone,” delegates sip coffee in air-conditioned halls while lobbyists sell $22 “carbon offsets” and NGOs push propaganda — including anti-Israel narratives smuggled in under the banner of “climate justice.” Outside the gates, real environmental and human stories unfold, mostly ignored.
The UN’s information crackdown isn’t theoretical. The same system that talks about “information integrity” is already finding bureaucratic excuses to keep skeptical journalists out of the rooms where decisions are made.
Independent journalism still matters. Sheila and Kian were willing to hike, sweat, and risk going into tough neighbourhoods to follow up on local tips. No government-funded newsroom did that job in Belém.

Thank you for sending us

To everyone who donated before or during the trip: thank you. You helped pay for flights that took Sheila from Edmonton to Toronto to Belém and back. You covered the inflated cost of accommodation in a city flooded by 55,000 delegates. You paid for ground transport, mobile data, translation help and the basic safety and technical gear needed to work in a hot, crowded and sometimes dangerous environment.

If you value this kind of on-the-ground reporting, please consider making a donation today to help us fully cover the cost of this mission.

Whether you can chip in $25, $50, $100 or more, every contribution goes directly to paying down the final costs of the trip, and let's us know that we should continue doing these kinds of missions again in the future.

Catch up on all the reports from Belém & past UN conferences

Every episode and written story Sheila and Kian filed from Brazil is collected here, along with our archive of past UN coverage from around the world.