If you take-away nothing else from our little blog take this:
Climate negotiations are always and everywhere a monetary phenomena.
Apologies to Milton Friedman's ghost for the re-purposing of the phrase.
From Reuters, November 20:
Climate negotiators were warned on Wednesday that the "hardest part" was about to start in talks over how much money should be provided to developing countries to help them adapt to climate-fuelled weather disasters and transition to cleaner energy.Figuring out what form that funding takes, who pays and how much is central to the COP29 talks. With a notional Friday deadline looming, frustration over the lack of progress so far was starting to seep out of the negotiating rooms.The chief negotiator of the COP29 summit's host Azerbaijan said "now the hardest part begins" ahead of a fresh text which is due to drop at midnight (2000 GMT) in the capital Baku.Progress at the annual summit is typically marked through regular draft documents that get whittled down to a final deal.Australia's environment minister Chris Bowen, tasked by the COP presidency with gathering the range of views in the negotiating rooms, said he had heard three proposals for the annual figure to be given by richer governments.These were $900 billion, $600 billion and $440 billion, which compared with a previously announced starting point of $100 billion from the European Union.EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the bloc was not willing to talk about the figure until it had more structural details, adding: "Otherwise you will have a shopping basket with a price, but you don't know exactly what is in there".Egypt's Minister of Environment, Yasmine Fouad, said countries had agreed not to treat the better off developing nations the same as richer ones when it came to paying in....
....MUCH MORE
