This year's United Nations climate talks, COP29, wrapped Saturday. Throughout the talks, it was all about the numbers. With the help of NPR climate reporters Julia Simon and Alejandra Borunda, we home in on two. First, $300 billion. That's the amount of money wealthy countries agreed to give developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and reduce pollution. Second, 1.5C. That's a warming limit countries agreed to try not to breach, but that is creeping closer every year. Want to hear the latest in climate news and solutions? Let us know your thoughts by emailing [email protected]!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the COP29 climate conference about?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers, it's Emily Kwong. And today we are recapping what's basically the Super Bowl of climate policy. I'm talking about the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Every year, leaders from countries gather to negotiate collective agreements about climate change, or at least that's the hope.
The 29th one, or COP29, just wrapped in Azerbaijan, and I hear it was a mess. Is that fair to say? It ended up finishing. Yay! They did it. Okay, here to tell us all about it are NPR climate reporters Julia Simon, who you just heard. Hello. And Alejandra Barunda. Hello, Emily. Hi. Julia, set the scene here. What was the goal of the summit this year?
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.
And as we all know, talking about money is a famously chill and easy thing to do, right? Super chill. This is a really, really fraught topic.
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.
So how much are developing countries getting right now in dollars?
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.
Yeah, this clearly is not enough for all the developing nations of the world. I assume they want more. Right.
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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Chapter 2: How much money did wealthy countries pledge at COP29?
And I just, I know that sounds scary, but to be clear, that's not really how anyone thinks about this. It's just one year. And scientists know that temperatures bop around a lot because of things like El Nino or just like a randomly hot year. And so that's why they do that approach that looks at the longer term averages in the first place. But it's also not a great sign.
Okay, to summarize, planet Earth, she's warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, maybe closer to 1.4, which is new information for me. It's alarmingly close to the 1.5 threshold, though. We must not pass in order to avoid some really scary possibilities of global warming. So how should I feel about this, like really, heading into my weekend? Heading into my life, really?
It's so hard because the reality is warming past 1.5 really does present these real existential threats to a lot of people around the world. Like the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, for example, it could literally end up underwater if sea levels rise too far. And that's a real risk. The farther warming gets past 1.5 C. Here's Abraham Nassak in their Ministry of Climate Change.
1.5 is not just a number for our Pacific small island developing states. It is a line in the sand necessary to ensure our survival.
A line in the sand necessary to ensure our survival. That is as serious as it gets. Like his people's future depends on this.
Yeah, but I think it's also important to know that passing that 1.5 level, it's not like falling off a cliff. It's more like we're playing a dice game that gets more and more loaded. Like the probability that bad things happen gets higher. Yeah, exactly.
But I do, I like want to stress that it's not like we wake up one morning past this 1.5 level and have all of these things just like happen at once. Got it. Okay. Andrew Jarvis is a climate scientist at Lancaster University in the UK. And he's an author of that new study I mentioned before, the one that tells us that we're closer to 1.4 than 1.3.
And he's like, honestly, it's very obvious what all of this should tell us.
it should remind us that we should probably double down on our efforts.
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