🎧 Listen: In today's episode of The Journal podcast, DJMatthewDalton explains how a broken $100 billion promise from the 2015 Paris climate accord is challenging the COP26 climate summit this week in Glasgow
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Matthew Dalton: Developed countries understood that there was a question of fairness there. That developed countries had spent nearly two centuries burning fossil fuels unchecked as they accumulated wealth. And now they were trying to get the developing countries to not do that, and it was going to make their development harder.
Matthew Dalton: This is money that is due to them because of the emissions from the wealthy countries that have caused the planet to warm. You could almost consider it a form of reparations. It is not aid, it's not charity. It's something that they're owed. There have been some countries in the Pacific Islands that have been talking about leaving the island completely, to another territory because the nation is so low lying that they can no longer feasibly live there.
Matthew Dalton: No democratically elected government in the west is going to devote, let's say 20% of its entire government budget, to funding the energy transition in the developing world. You're talking about numbers that, politically speaking, would be not feasible at all for any country to undertake. So that's why you need to get the private sector involved.
Matthew Dalton: So this government money is going to absorb the first losses if a renewable energy project blows up, or if it's taken by the government. This is their protection. Matthew Dalton: Yeah. The UK, which is chairing the meeting, they knew that the $100 billion was not met in 2020. It was pretty clear to everyone. So to deal with all of the political problems and the negotiations that that fact created, they write a report saying, this is how we're going to give you your $100 billion annually.
Matthew Dalton: You could argue that it's the most ambitious collaborative effort ever attempted by mankind. You're talking about 100 ... more than 190 different governments that have all kinds of different interests, different levels of development. That are trying to come together to do the same thing, more or less. I think being face to face is very important because there's no way to compel one country, or another country to take action.
Matthew Dalton: One of the big issues in Glasgow is how much money are the developed countries going to provide after 2025? So in Paris, they agreed to provide 100 billion annually, from 2020 to 2025, and then come up with a new target that was going to be more. And one of the big things is they're trying to figure out how they start negotiating on this new target.
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