This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
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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.
This is not even a joke. It is an offense to the demands of the global south.
And Emily, there's another topic that's also been a source of big debate in the climate community and came up this year at the COP a little bit. And that is the number 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Oh, like the climate benchmark. 1.5 to stay alive. We must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming over pre-industrial times. That number.
Exactly. You know what I'm talking about here.
I do. I do.
It showed up almost 10 years ago in the Paris Agreement of 2015. And it was the number that a lot of countries agreed to try to keep below in the massive project of trying to limit global warming around the world. Okay. Unfortunately, it's getting uncomfortably close. And so there's a lot of chatter happening at conferences like these where people are starting to ask, is that goal even possible? And if not, what happens?
Today on the show, numbers, numbers, numbers galore. Climate numbers that countries and scientists are thinking a lot about as the world works to limit global warming. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, Julia and Alejandra, let's talk about the money number first. The number that wealthy countries agreed to give developing countries each year starting in 2035. What dollar figure did they arrive at? Did they even arrive at a number?
I talked to Jessica Green about it. She's a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
So there were all these numbers bandied about. Right. And the one point three trillion was the one that came from the high level group on climate finance that said this is what developing countries and emerging economies need. The number they got was $300 billion.
How are developing countries feeling about that number? I guess at least $300 billion is something. Yeah, it's something.
It's very different than $1.3 trillion. Yeah. Here's what Nkiruka Madukwe, a delegate from Nigeria, said.
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