Julia Simon
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-19-2025 3PM EDT
Endangered whales and sea turtles, tropical seabirds and black coral live in the vast area in the Pacific. President George W. Bush originally established the monument and President Obama expanded it. While the Trump administration argues that this move to open the area for commercial fishing will help that industry, some ecologists argue the opposite.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-19-2025 3PM EDT
That's because protected areas can allow space for fish to spawn more successfully. Julia Simon, NPR News.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Many countries wanted at least $1.3 trillion a year. What? But as of late last week, they were not getting anything close to a trillion. As of Friday, the proposed number was $250 billion. Here's the representative from Bolivia responding to that number.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
I talked to Jessica Green about it. She's a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
It's very different than $1.3 trillion. Yeah. Here's what Nkiruka Madukwe, a delegate from Nigeria, said.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
As Jessica pointed out, this money is not in the form of grants, which is what many countries wanted. It's loans.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Right. And in the long term, these countries might end up with more debt. Also, here's Maduke again. She mentions the NCQG. That's the acronym for this money.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And what she's talking about in part there is that as part of the Paris Agreement, all these countries have to submit targets for reducing their climate pollution by 2035. And the hope is that all these cuts combined will limit the world's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
What Anquiruka Madukwe is pointing out is that one of the main things this money is supposed to go to is helping countries meet those targets for reducing emissions. Right.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Exactly. You need money to buy solar panels or wind turbines or close down coal plants. And- Yeah. With less money, that means developing countries can't have as ambitious targets in the first place to reach that 1.5 degrees goal, which is a big problem.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
This year was really all about the money. How much money wealthy countries would give to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and reduce their pollution.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And Julia, just piping in here, you might have heard the news that this year, 2024, global temperatures are on track to average above 1.5 degrees. degrees Celsius for the first time ever. The World Meteorological Association announced that recently. Yeah.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
It's really fraught because developing countries, they did the least to cause global warming and And they're looking for a big number from wealthy countries to help them do things like buy solar panels and wind turbines, things to help them move away from fossil fuels.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Well, every COP has their kind of different goal. This year was really about money for developing countries. However, those targets that are supposed to add up to 1.5 degrees, they're due in February. So that's coming up. And so there were some countries that at the summit submitted their targets, like Brazil. Brazil says their cuts align with the 1.5 degree goal.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Climate policy experts say that's still unclear. Yeah.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And just to clarify, I don't want people listening to lose hope. There are other countries that could have more ambitious goals. There are countries that do have more ambitious goals, like the United Kingdom. They came out with goals that are, quote unquote, 1.5 degrees aligned. So it is happening.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Yeah, going into the talks, the number had been $100 billion a year for all developing countries. And if you think about it, this really isn't that much money. Right. In Colombia, they are looking for a plan to transition their economy away from fossil fuels and adapt to climate change. They are looking at $40 billion. They're one country.
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This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And at the end of the day, everything we do to curb our emissions as much as possible, that matters. The more we cut, the better it is. This isn't a zero-sum game.