COP29 Bickers Over Money While the World Burns
Wealthy nations and developing ones are far apart on financing the fight against climate change as the tab continues to skyrocket.
Pinching pennies.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Once and future President Donald Trump might be withdrawing the US from global leadership in the fight against climate change, but nobody at the latest United Nations climate confab seems interested in taking the job. Where it truly counts — financially — everybody’s shirking responsibility. The whole world will suffer as a result.
COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, was always going to be a fight about money, and so far it’s going about as well as you’d expect a money fight to go. Developed nations have been loath to pitch in more than $100 billion a year in total to slow emissions and help developing nations prepare for the consequences. They want wealthy-ish countries such as China and Saudi Arabia to join them before agreeing to pay more. Developing nations call that a nonstarter and want the rich ones alone to pony up $1.3 trillion a year. You could drive 10 Cybertrucks side by side through these negotiating positions (assuming the Cybertrucks haven’t been recalled again).