[MUSIC - Maden Hill: Hijack]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show. First climate and then teaching science in school in a politicized time. We'll do that one later with a call-in for teachers on this day off from school, plus somebody who wrote a book about teaching science who used to be a New York City science teacher, but the climate section first. The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, that's a mouthful, opened in Brazil this week. The meeting is more commonly known as COP30, 30 because it marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of formal UN negotiations on climate change. This year, breaking a long-standing tradition, the US will not play an active role in the talks. No high-level White House officials are attending COP30. At least according to the Guardian, some world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief.

Last month in London, officials met to rubber-stamp plants for a small levy on greenhouse gas emissions caused by shipping. US Representatives were accused of using bully-like behavior, the article says, to force countries to drop the plan, issuing threats of higher fees for docking in American ports and imposing visa restrictions for negotiators and their families. Trump had called the proposal a global green new scam tax on shipping. Well, sure enough, the pollution fee is now delayed at least for a year.

A former senior State Department official told the Guardian, "Before, it was benign neglect, even in Trump's first term. Now it's quite the opposite. They don't want to participate, and they don't want others to either." The Guardian asks, "Could COP30 be better off without the Trump administration at all, rather than a presence that's destructive?" To the larger question, how's the climate doing 30 years on from the start of this process? What can the conference achieve?

Joining us now to break down the latest from COP30 and some history of how we got here are Paula DiPerna, policy consultant, author of Pricing the Priceless, and co-author of a new book, Carbon Hunters: Reflections And Forecasts of Climate Markets In The 21st Century and Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now, author of Big Red's Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America. He joins us from COP30 in Brazil. Paula and Mark, welcome back both of you to WNYC. Hi.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks for having me.

Paula DiPerna: Thanks for having, always good to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, you want to start with a report from on the ground and especially on the news that the United States is not in attendance this year. Is it changing anything?

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, in fact, there's just breaking news on that in this hour, Brian. We just concluded Covering Climate Now just concluded a press briefing with Christiana Figueres. Some listeners may remember that she was one of the key architects of the Paris Agreement, that was signed 10 years ago. That's a landmark agreement that committed the world to limiting global temperature rise to well below, was the exact words, well below 2 degrees, and preferably 1.5 degrees.

She is a veteran diplomat. We just had a press briefing with her, and I put that question to her directly about does she feel that it's a good thing that Donald Trump decided not to send a US Government delegation? Her exact words were, "Ciao bambino." It's a good thing that they're not here because they are only an obstructive force. She referenced that International Maritime Organization episode that you just talked about, Brian, which she called the most grotesque form of bullying on the part of the US.

She also said, though, that it is going to be better for the outcome here because other countries and the world economy are rapidly moving away from the old fossil fuel business. She points out that this last year, global private investment in the new technologies of clean energy and renewable agriculture, and so forth has been twice as high as the investment in the old fossil fuel economy. We're seeing solar prices and wind prices plummeting around the world, China in particular leading that. Because the solar panels coming out of China are so cheap, you're seeing countries like Pakistan and across Africa, solar is booming there.

Figueres, again, one of the architects of the Paris Agreement of 2015, she said, "Look, it's like a multi-lane highway, and most of the world, everybody's in their own different lanes. There's businesses, there's governments, there's national governments, local governments, there's activists, there's all kinds of stakeholders. The United States has decided, under Donald Trump, United States government, I should say, has decided to basically pull their car over to the side and they're not going to keep driving down this road while all the rest of us are still driving. We see the US Car over there, flashing its yellow lights, trying to get attention. We're not going to pay attention. Ciao bambino."

Which for those of you who don't know your Italian, that's, "Goodbye, little boy."

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Right. Paula, on that attitude, the ciao bambino attitude toward the US non-participation, we know Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement again at the beginning of his term this year. He even recently called climate change a con job. Can the rest of the world achieve enough progress on slowing climate change to avoid the worst kinds of catastrophic effects without the second biggest polluter, the United States?

Paula DiPerna: Well, probably not in the long run, but I completely concur. I like the multi-lane highway analogy. People are moving, people are volunteering, investors are putting money where they think they'll get return. It really doesn't matter for the moment, and by the moment, I mean the next couple of years, what the United States actually does, because the government-- You need science, policy, and capital to work together.

The science is telling us every day that the planetary health is deteriorating. If you don't believe that, then you pull your car to the side of the road. I do feel that the world must make progress without the United States because we don't have much of an alternative. The upside is huge if we actually take all those lanes and pull them together as a gigantic, international, fascinating, exciting engineering challenge.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your comments and questions on COP30, the state of the climate generally, the US non-participation, anything else you want to say. 212-433 WNYC. Maybe your questions for Mark Hertsgaard from Covering Climate Now, who's down there in Brazil, or for Paula Diperna, who is a long-term expert in this field on climate markets, carbon markets, among other things. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Paula, when we come back from the break, I want to tap your expertise in economics to talk about the costs and the benefits because this is a lot of what we hear from the Trump administration and state and local level Republicans that the climate change efforts have been too costly in terms of energy prices in the United States for the amount of mitigation that they're providing. I want to get your take on that. We'll take some callers. We'll keep talking to Mark in Brazil. Listeners stay with us here on WNYC.

[MUSIC - Maden Hill: Hijack]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue in our Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show. As I said, coming up later, part two, teaching science in school in a politicized time. We'll take calls from science teachers on this day off from school. We'll also talk to a former New York City science teacher who's now written a book about creative ways of teaching science. Forget about the politics, just to get the kids into it. We'll be on both of those tracks, but we continue on the climate section first, talking about the COP30 climate summit now taking place in Brazil.

Can they accomplish anything with the Trump administration not participating this year? With our guests, Paula DiPerna, policy consultant, author of the new book Carbon Hunters: Reflections And Forecasts of Climate Markets In The 21st Century, and Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now, he joins us from COP30 in Brazil.

Paula, I teased that question before the break, and so here it is. I think the Republicans have been gaining some traction politically speaking on the costs of climate change mitigation, driving up energy prices, and not being worth whatever it take-- Whether they believe climate change is real or not, not being worth however much destruction climate change might cause without requirements for a conversion away from carbon and things like that. Have you crunched these numbers?

Paula DiPerna: Well, I wish I was a number cruncher, but I try to crunch them, but at a generic level, there's people throwing all kinds of numbers around. For example, $50 billion just in efficiency gains reported by companies in the last several years by taking on new efficiencies in their businesses. The key thing, Brian, and for the people who are listening, is the word costs and what you're comparing. It's easy to say it's too expensive because the costs of not doing, not taking the problem in hand, don't land on the macroeconomy.

They land on the people whose roof blows off in a storm like in Jamaica, or in the people who are trapped in the subway if the subways flood. That's where the costs are really being felt. Energy prices are a function of regulation, and probably poor regulation, and possibly deregulation that has really no parallel relationship to the investments necessary or being made to mitigate climate change. There are people who say the whole gross national, gross development, the GDP is entirely 100% dependent on the work that nature is doing for free.

There's a huge unpaid cost there that we're not remunerating nature for pollination services, are we? We just eat the honey, we eat the vegetables, and nature just keeps laying on the work. I like to say nature is the most exploited worker in the history of the world, if you look at it that way. You're comparing the costs versus the benefits. You have to be comparing comparable elements there. It's really irrelevant to just say that the costs are too high. There is no cost. There's only one planet.

The difficulty is those costs are being kicked around the economy, and they don't land where they should land. In other words, they don't land on the policymakers, they land on the people. The people don't have a collective voice relative to mitigating those costs. Bottom line, there's a credit card, a national credit card that nature issues, and we're way overdrawn on it right now.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, we have a caller with a question for you down there at COP30 at the conference in Brazil. Jean in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jean.

Jean: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a question. I've read that a number of states, I don't remember how many, have sent a delegation of about 100 people to the conference. I'm wondering if that makes any difference with respect to American participation or impact.

Brian Lehrer: Jean, thank you. Mark, so if the Trump administration is not participating, are delegations from some of the 50 states?

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, there's actually quite a few governors and mayors from the United States. Christiana Figueres, the former head of the Paris Agreement and others here always make a point of mentioning that when they say they're happy that Donald Trump did not send a federal US delegation. In fact, Figueres is on her way to do an event this afternoon here with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who, of course, is the head of the fourth biggest economy in the world, whose economy has grown very rapidly from its strong leadership in clean energy.

Going back to that question about the economics, Brian, let me just bring a global perspective to this since I'm here in Belém, Brazil, it's laughable, ridiculous that Republicans are trying to say that it costs more to go green when all around the world, including in the state of Texas, including all across the United States, solar is now by far the cheapest form of electricity you can buy. Wind is also very cheap, and Texas happens to be a leader in that. That's why many Republican governors and members of Congress were in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act put forward by Joe Biden.

Internationally, all of the money is now going into green energies. Why? It's not because of any ethical or moral point of view. It's because they're cheaper. Please, folks listening, and my colleagues in the media, don't buy this. It's really nonsense. I can't believe that Republicans are saying it with a straight face because all they have to do is go talk to Wall Street and Wall Street knows perfectly well that that is the cheapest form of electricity.

That's why Christiana Figueres points out that, "Look, the rest of the world is going that direction. What they say, when they say, ciao bambino to Trump, is like, "Yes, pull over to the side of the road. Once you're out of office, you're going to have to go down this road anyway. You'll just be a lot farther behind."

Brian Lehrer: Let me go further down this path by playing a clip of the UN Climate chief, Simon Stiell, opening the summit yesterday and urging countries to cooperate on things they can cooperate on, rather than focus on the fights. Listen.

Simon Stiell: In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another. Your job here is to fight this climate crisis together. Paris is working to deliver real progress. Let's not forget that. Friends, we must strive valiantly for more.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, Reuters reports that Brazil suggested that countries focus on smaller efforts that do not need consensus, such as deforestation. After years of COP summits making lofty promises, only to leave many unfulfilled. Without the Trump administration there, with only states there representing the United States, who could only make smaller promises, are you seeing this? I know it's still early in the summit, but are you seeing smaller things being focused on that might be more achievable rather than bigger things that might not?

Mark Hertsgaard: I would not characterize it as smaller things if that's what the Reuters people said. I would respectfully disagree. There are many, many items of implementation, about 475 at last count, within the Paris Agreement. What people say is, "Look, Paris Agreement is a good idea. The implementation has not been as strong as it should have been." That's what they're talking about, it's how to implement the various measures that are in the Paris Agreement, which is a harder concept, I think, to convey in terms of success.

One other point I would make that Brazil has been very clever about, and it happened last week outside of COP. There was a leaders summit last week which is technically not part of the COP30 process. It was world leaders from around the world, President Macron, British Prime Minister Starmer, and so forth. Brazil is putting forward a really unprecedented, quite ambitious, and bold proposal in that context, outside of COP, in that context called TFFF. It's basically Tropical Forests Forever Financed.

It's trying to do an end run around the COP30 process, which is done by UN rules, which means that any one country can block it. It has to be a consensus. This TFFF, this tropical forest proposal, is outside of that. The idea is basically to get $25 billion of public money, use that to go into the private markets, leverage it as a form of collateral to build a fund of $125 billion, invest that $125 billion, and then the revenues from that go directly into forest protection.

Here's the really unprecedented part of that. 20% of those resulting revenues will go directly to indigenous people and communities around the world, which peer review climate science tells us the one thing that works to protect forests, to keep them standing rather than cutting them down, is to give the indigenous people who live in those forests their legal rights, their property rights, and the protection from agribusiness and others who try to steal that land, miners who try to exploit that. That's a very impressive and innovative approach. That's what I'm going to be watching in the days to come.

As I say, it's not part of COP, so it can't be blocked by Saudi Arabia, could not be blocked by the US if the US were here. It's something that is really pathbreaking.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. As we start to run out of time, Paula, I wonder where you think things stand now, 30 years after the beginning of this process. That's why it's called COP30. We heard in the clip that we played of the UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, say Paris is working. The Paris climate accord from 10 years ago is working to deliver real progress. Is it?

Paula DiPerna: Well, it's a half-full, half-empty question. The thing in Rio in 1992, where I was with Jacques Cousteau, and where heads of state were like deer flies in your hair. That's how common they were. You couldn't really take a step without bumping into one of them. It was a big idea, it was an exciting idea. It was fueled by public purpose, and it was coherent. There was a single goal. Emissions were going up. We have to bring them down.

The word implementation is very critical because what's happened is in trying to implement that original agreement that was launched in '92, and then the Paris Agreement and now every year, 30 years. It is crazy that we've been at this for 30-plus years and we don't have all that much to show. On the other hand, we have a lot to show for it because it's a hard problem. As I said earlier, it's become an engineering problem.

It's like, think of it as what goes up must go down, but when you want to go, say, on a diet, you think, "Okay, great, I'll lose some weight. Okay, how? Well, I'll start to cut calories. Hmm. Okay, which kind? Oh, no, carbs. Well, I like carbs. What about eating more meat? Well, no, that's not good for the land." It's hard to figure out what calories to lose. It's exactly the same with what's been going on. The implementation of all these different pieces, helping the economy adjust like a stereo system, up with the bass, down with the tenor, et cetera, that's what we have to do. That requires coherence.

I would say the big difference is that we've become very fragmented in almost every way. I think that's the big problem. I like the idea of all the highways leading to one place, not all going in different directions, frankly.

Brian Lehrer: You just used a food analogy. I'll invite you to wrap this up with a reference from your new book, Carbon Hunters, where you write about how originally climate change was seen as a linear problem, but the longer we ignored it, the more spaghetti and meatballs it became. Why that food analogy?

Paula DiPerna: Well, I'm Italian, [chuckles] but also, when you look at a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, and not to be too coy about this, everything connects to everything. This is what perhaps was not perceived when it was considered a linear problem. Okay, the emissions have gone up. We've got to bring them down. When you get to the how, you realize there's these strands that connect to something substantial.

For example, in climate, one "meatball" would be buildings. In '92, people weren't really focused on the energy use of buildings. Now you really understand that every building has to be redesigned, rethought, reimagined, retrofit, rehabbed, made to become as efficient as possible. We try it, we're taking little bites, to use another food analogy of that buildings problem, but we're not there yet. In New York City, we're going to have to be tackling that pretty soon. There are these pieces, I guess you could say, the meatballs that are essentially sectors like steel, like automobiles.

The idea of a linear problem started to bump into the reality of, well, how do you bring the emissions down? Just like you look at a bowl of spaghetti, meatballs, and you say, "Hmm, which is the meatball that you can see?" It stands out because it connects to all the spaghetti strands that are running into it. I won't take that any further, but I think the point is clear.

Brian Lehrer: You made that dish clear. Paula DiPerna in the United States, author of the new book Carbon Hunters: Reflections And Forecasts Of Climate Markets In The 21st Century, and Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, covering climate now in Brazil at the COP30 Climate Summit. Thank you both very much.

Paula DiPerna: Thank you.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thank you.

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.