Imagine you go online to book a flight. When you pay, you notice one additional line item next to the standard taxes and fees: Something called a “global solidarity levy” has added an extra dollar to your $200 flight. That half-percent is going to Somalia, where it will help pay farmers who have lost their goat herds in a severe drought — which was supercharged by the global warming that your flight is accelerating — and are now without food or water access.
This is the vision of a new effort underway at United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. This year’s conference, which is known as COP29, is all about money: which countries will pay to help fight climate change, how much money they will send, and what that money will accomplish. Past efforts to fund decarbonization and climate resilience in the developing world have all but failed. Wealthy nations have delivered money in a piecemeal, opaque manner, leaving trillions of dollars of unmet needs in the world’s poorest nations.
Read Next ... Read more
