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The world is a decade late and $2.7 trillion short per year
The climate agreement reached at the United Nations’ COP29 is, to put it mildly, insufficient. To put it not so mildly, it’s pathetic.
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Countries that have emitted almost none of the greenhouse gases heating up the planet but will suffer the brunt of the consequences will end up at least US$2 trillion per year short and a decade away from relief.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Mark Gongloff
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Watching another chaotic United Nations climate confab end in disappointment brings to mind that old saw, incorrectly ascribed to Winston Churchill, about America always doing the right thing, but only after it has exhausted every alternative. Except, in this case, the world’s polluting nations are stuck in the “exhausting alternatives” phase and are quickly running out of time to do the right thing.
We can at least be glad that COP29 – the 2024 conference for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Baku, Azerbaijan – didn’t end in complete disaster like 2009’s gathering in Copenhagen.
