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
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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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