NEW YORK — The effort to save the pale blue dot called Earth is all about the green — that is, the money to finance a transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
The annual Climate Week NYC and United Nations General Assembly combination is putting special emphasis on how to generate trillions of dollars to help poorer countries move away from gas, oil and coal that emit greenhouse gases and heat the planet. They also need financial aid to deal with the damage the warming is already causing.
There’s also a special U.N. summit of the future, which connects climate change and biodiversity to other pressing issues like war, and another U.N. special session on the threat of rising seas. And the presidents of climate negotiations in 2023, 2024 and 2025 are seeking to push nations into a new round of dramatic pollution cuts with their own efforts.
This week starts a two-month sprint in which three different cities on three different continents host high-level meetings that may be humanity’s “last chance” to avoid exceeding globally agreed upon warming limits, according to one expert. After Climate Week in New York, Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku hosts the U.N.’s 29th climate negotiation conference. Then, leaders of the 20 biggest countries head to Rio de Janeiro. And early next year, all the world’s countries must submit new national targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Stepping up
“A lot of the failure or success of [the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement] is going to be determined in the next eight or nine months as countries put forward their next round of” proposed emission reduction goals, said longtime climate negotiations analyst Alden Meyer of the European think tank E3G. “If these don’t step up and meet the mark, it’s really our last chance.”
Yalchin Rafiyev, lead negotiator for the presidency of November’s U.N. climate conference in Baku, said the week in New York is “a very important milestone event for us.”
Not only will climate negotiators be in New York, but so will their bosses, their heads of states, Rafiyev told The Associated Press. So when often informal talks hit a snag or new ideas come up, especially on the sticky issue of finances, negotiators can quickly check with their leaders, which may help move things, he said.
Underscoring everything is the money to fix the problems.
“It’s definitely about the greens,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “”It is about greening the world and not getting the green to green the world.”
And where better to talk about it than in New York City, the capital of capital, Dasgupta said.
Developing countries — where more than 80% of the world population lives — say that they need financial help to curb their increasing use of fossil fuels. Otherwise they can’t afford to.
Poorer nations point to historical emissions — carbon dioxide stays in the air for hundreds of years — that came mostly from the industrialized world. Those wealthier countries now can more easily afford to switch to renewable energy such as solar and wind. As they do, close to two-thirds of current carbon dioxide emissions come from nations not considered industrialized.
Chicken-and-egg problem
This is the week that “the cries of the global majority will make it very loud and clear” that this climate financial help for poor nations is crucial, said PowerShift Africa’s Mohamed Adow, a longtime climate analyst. They will do so on the floor of the U.N., at outside events during Climate Week and in one-on-one meetings between national leaders in town for the annual General Assembly, he said.
In 2009, rich nations set a goal of $100 billion a year in government climate financial help to poor nations, but they didn’t reach that mark until 2022, years late. The priority for the meeting in Azerbaijan is to come up with a new goal for money help. And rich and poor nations aren’t close on how much it should be, who should pay and what type of financing should be included.
“Rich countries have failed in many of their previous promises and have kept putting it off, putting it off, pointing towards the new long-term finance goals, but they can’t kick the can any further,” Adow said.
Dasgupta called it a chicken-and-egg problem, with rich countries telling poor to go green before we talk about money, and poor nations saying we need money first.
Much more than 10 years ago when the Paris climate agreement was struck, people now realize climate finance is crucial to cutting emissions, Dasgupta said.
Price tag
The success of 2025’s climate negotiations, when the world will attempt to ratchet up its efforts to reduce carbon pollution in a major way, depends on what happens about finance in Baku this fall, said World Wildlife Fund’s Fernanda Carvalho.
But the problem is the price tag. Most experts say that $100 billion a year was far too low. Earlier this year, U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said the annual financial need is $2.4 trillion. Adow said the number should be determined not by politicians negotiating but what the countries need to get the job done.
“People argue ‘Oh my God, we don’t have $2 trillion,’” Dasgupta said. But that’s less than 2% of the globe’s GDP, he added. The world spends more on fossil fuel subsidies, Adow said.
Much of Climate Week involves companies and financial networks talking about their green credentials. Dasgupta said they need to step up, because the world’s nations can’t do more than $1 trillion in direct funding.
“We need to get finance ministers talking to us and the masters of the universe, people who run New York City, the people who run private capital talking together to make this happen,” Dasgupta said. “It is not just an environmental problem. It is how do we get the finance right for the transition? And it is lots of work to be done.”
