LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Every year, world leaders gather together for a summit on global warming. This year, leaders are in Baku, Azerbaijan. Joining me now is Julia Simon, NPR's climate solutions correspondent, to talk about what the stakes are at this year's negotiations. Hi, Julia.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: OK, Julia, so the meeting kicked off today less than a week after voters picked Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. To start us off, how does the outcome of the U.S. election shape these talks?
SIMON: Trump has called climate change a hoax. He's called President Biden's plans to reduce emissions a green new scam. And then there's the Paris Agreement. That's this historic decision to try to limit the world's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over temperatures from the late 1800s. Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement in his first term. Climate policy experts think he's likely to do it again. Here's Alden Meyer from the climate change think tank E3G.
ALDEN MEYER: President-elect Trump has made very clear that he won't wait six months to pull out of the Paris Agreement, like he did in his last term, he will pull out on Day 1.
FADEL: OK, so what does that mean for these talks then?
SIMON: So if the U.S. does pull out of the Paris Agreement, which is very likely, it will take some time to make that official. But over the next two weeks, it's fairly likely that countries just won't be looking to the U.S. in the same way they would've if Vice President Kamala Harris had won. Countries will likely be looking to China, to the European Union, the United Kingdom to pick up the slack and say, yes, we still intend to go ahead with the Paris Agreement. This is all really important because by February, countries have to submit these key targets as part of the Paris Agreement. Basically, they have to say, we're going to cut all this climate pollution to meet that goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
FADEL: Do we know if these upcoming targets to cut emissions will be enough to meet this goal?
SIMON: As of now, a lot of the projections say that they won't. At the climate summit last year, participants agreed for the first time that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels like oil, coal, gas. But many countries, including the U.S., are investing in more and more fossil fuels. Trump has promised he's going to boost them even more. Trump has also promised to make cuts to these climate solutions that are reducing emissions, things like solar, wind, big batteries. These new targets for countries for cutting emissions are supposed to be more ambitious than the last ones, so, Leila, this is a big topic of conversation at the summit.
FADEL: So, Julia, the focus of the climate summit this year is money. What exactly are we talking about moneywise?
SIMON: As we know, global warming, it's already happening. 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record - more floods, heat waves, wildfires. It's very expensive to prepare for these climate disasters, particularly for developing countries, who contributed the least to climate change. So 15 years ago, wealthy countries said, we're going to give $100 billion annually to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change, to help them transition away from fossil fuels. Pretty much everybody recognizes that $100 billion isn't enough. For context, Colombia recently announced their climate investment plan. They are looking for 40 billion, and they are...
FADEL: Just for Colombia.
SIMON: ...One country. Right.
FADEL: Yeah.
SIMON: Figuring out that number, that's the key goal of the summit. And developing countries also want to be sure that wealthy countries actually know how they're going to pay for it.
FADEL: That's NPR's Julia Simon. Thank you, Julia.
SIMON: Thank you, Leila.
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