UN climate talks to focus on money to help poor nations cut carbon pollution
Experts calculate that curbing and coping with global warming is going to cost trillions of dollars and poor nations just don’t have it
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A complex international two-week-long game of climate change poker is convening. The stakes? Just the fate of an ever-warming world.
Curbing and coping with climate change's worsening heat, floods, droughts and storms will cost trillions of dollars and poor nations just don't have it, numerous reports and experts calculate. As United Nations climate negotiations started Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, the chief issue is who must ante up to help poor nations and especially how much.
The numbers are enormous. The floor in negotiations is the $100 billion a year that poor nations — based on a categorization made in the 1990s — now get as part of a 2009 agreement that was barely met. Several experts and poorer nations say the need is $1 trillion a year or more.
“It's a game with high stakes,” said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare, a physicist. “Right now the fate of the planet depends very much on what we're able to pull off in the next five or 10 years.”
