Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with our climate story of the week because this is the week of the COP27 Climate Conference that President Biden and other world leaders have been attending in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. We will focus largely on one of the issues at the conference. Should wealthy countries that caused the most warming pay reparations to poorer countries in the Global South suffering the worst effects?

Now, I want to set this up with 30 seconds of a very disturbing story reported by CBS News this week. This isn't breaking through very much in the United States with all the focus on Trump announcing for president and everything else, but this is about climate change and a massive famine in Somalia, in East Africa. This was CBS News correspondent Debora Patta in Baidoa in Somalia, talking after a reference to the experts and air-conditioned conference halls at COP27.

Debora Patta: Everyday mothers bring their severely malnourished children to this hospital for treatment. They don't need experts in air-conditioned conference halls to explain what they've experienced firsthand. It is getting hotter every year, the droughts more frequent. After five failed rainy seasons, Somalia is once again on the brink of famine. Every child in this ICU ward in Baidoa is under five, every one of them a victim of climate change.

Brian Lehrer: Every one of them a victim of climate change, that from CBS News. A relevant and extreme example of a country, to be accurate, on the brink of famine, she said, a country that has not contributed much at all to global warming, suffering some of the most dire effects and with few resources compared to the big polluting countries to alleviate the hunger. Reparations, anyone. With us now is Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy and climate innovation editor at The Economist who's been reporting on COP27. Vijay, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: I think it might be useful to go over some of the basics first. COP27, COP stands for Conference of the Parties. The parties to what?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: This is an annual UN gathering, all the countries that are members of the United Nations and signatories to a framework agreement. Again, we're getting into UN jargon here, but since you asked, the Framework Convention on Climate Change the UNFCCC, that is the countries of the world have come together and signed that they will actually tackle climate change.

This process, once a year, gets together in a different part of the world for one of these COP summits as it is called, the Conference of the Parties, to try to move the ball forward on different elements of trying to deal with emissions, whether it's mitigation, which means dealing with reducing emissions themselves, whether it's adaptation, helping countries that are vulnerable to build sea walls or in other ways help their communities.

Of course, the issue of the hour that you've already signaled, which is lost and damaged, that is when the unavoidable happens, how do we compensate victims, how do we help them in their tragedies? Those are the different buckets that people tend to think about this. Those are the things that negotiators discuss at these COP meetings.

Brian Lehrer: On that, who's proposing what exactly with respect to loss and damage, otherwise known as reparations?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: The official language is loss and damage. Reparations is a loaded word. We could talk about how and why that's a problematic concept that might actually be counterproductive, but I'm with you. This is really what it means. This is, in a sense, developing countries, particularly, island states, that might be submerged or certainly have very powerful effects on their populations, and other vulnerable states are asking for, indeed demanding and have done for a couple of decades now, this is not a new demand, that the countries that got rich burning fossil fuels, particularly the countries of Europe and America, should pay developing countries, the ones that are likely to suffer the most damages going forward and who contributed very little to the problem through the loss and damage fund, to set up a formal facility within the United Nations to fund it.

In addition, they would like some form of acknowledgment of that harm that's been done. That's where the reparations side of it comes in. There's a difference of opinion on whether the apology, the reparations component of it, comes into this or whether you make it more narrow, and just put the money in there and help solve, or at least address the problems that are inevitable because it becomes quite poisonous in terms of the politics of it for a country like the United States, particularly to acknowledge guilt. It opens up a can of worms in terms of litigation, for example, which is why the US has historically resisted efforts to try to go down this path.

Brian Lehrer: Well, some of the underlying stats are really dramatic. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. Maybe you know them in your head, but basically, the US has 4% of the world's population, but 25% to 30% of the world's wealth, and has emitted 25% to 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions over time. Is that roughly a true set of numbers there, that I gave, as you understand it?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Well, sure. You can include Europe and Japan as well. The industrialized world got rich first, and mostly got there by burning fossil fuels, especially coal, and so it's responsible for a big stock of the historical emissions. Now, the picture is a little bit complicated because if you say, "Well, this is a moral question. The people who got rich, burning fossil fuels, contributing to the problem in a big way, are not the ones that are probably going to suffer the worst damages."

Another set of numbers, we can look at Africa, for example, has contributed barely 3% of the world's stock of greenhouse gases, that is they contributed very little to the problem, and yet, it's probably the continent that's going to experience the worst of the coming climate change havoc, whether it's weather-related or whether it's migration. We know the tragedies are unfortunately already starting to unfold. The moral case seems very clear. The world needs to have resources directed to Africa in a substantial way.

For example, the complication is, "Wait a minute. What about China?" Now China has a lot of poor people still, I lived in China as bureau chief The Economist for a number of years, but at the same time, it is, by far, the world's biggest emitter, and also, it continues to build more coal plants. It is going to burn more coal on current plans and investments that it's making in the next 10 to 20 years than any country on Earth. Shouldn't China be part of reparations or payment structure because it got rich mostly in the last 20 years when we all knew climate change was an issue?

You can argue that in the 1890s, maybe in Dickensian England, there wasn't an awareness that burning coal was going to lead to tragedy in Africa due to climate change 100 years hence. If you were to take a moral position about it, maybe that's the weak moral argument, but there's no arguing in the last 10 to 20 years, anybody that's burned coal, nevermind the next 10 to 20 years, knows that this is contributing to the problem and maybe should be culpable. That's why the picture gets a little bit complicated with just pointing the finger at the US and Europe.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, should the US and Europe and maybe China pay reparations to other smaller, poorer countries around the world suffering the worst effects of climate change, as we have been the worst emitters of greenhouse gases that have created it? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Vijay, if this was a civil lawsuit in civil court, the way we understand it in the United States, the poor countries of the Global South like Somalia, with the impact we heard about in the clip, and oh, my God, I don't know if you've seen that CBS News story, but the visuals of these starving children in the ICU just tear at your heart, it's nothing like we've ever seen in this country, so they would have a pretty strong loss and damage case, wouldn't they, in civil court, as we usually experience in the United States, if it was that kind of individual suing an individual lawsuit?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Right. The moral case is very strong, but you're asking a very specific question. In a court of law, is there a direct line connecting a particular action or set of actions, people driving their SUVs to work in the Midwest of America, burning gasoline that's dug up by, let's say, Exxon, did that cause that particular problem or what's the line of attribution is called? It's not so easy. This is difficult to prove a direct line.

Now there is a new field, a burgeoning field, called attribution science, where they're making progress in this way, but it's a little murky because what about Saudi Arabia and the Middle Eastern countries that produce a lot of this oil? Where does the attribution go there? Why aren't they culpable? We can include Russia, of course, with natural gas and Qatar, which are the big gas powerhouses.

It suddenly begins to get a little bit diffused. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, stays in the atmosphere for a hundred years so which generation are you blaming, in which country? This is, again, I don't want to undermine in any way the moral case, moral argument is compelling. We need to prepare enormous resources that we will have to make available and deliver to the neediest in the world, whatever we call it. Whether we call it a UN loss and damage facility run by UN bureaucrats or we call it humanitarian aid, or we deliver this as micro-grants right to the villages bypassing the bureaucracy.

Or think about how we have existing structures for global health where we vaccinate, we meaning the world funded by rich countries and philanthropies like the Gates Foundation. We do enormous good work already in public health. This could be seen as a similar and related area because health is going to be a big part of the climate problem.

It's really a question of what structure do you use. Is the kind of UN fund that's being demanded the right way to deal with these issues? I don't think anyone is questioning whether there should be enormous resources to help people in need. It's a question of will you win in a court of law and does that open up a question of unlimited liabilities. In which case, no US government of any political persuasion would probably sign off on that.

Brian Lehrer: How is this idea or any particular proposal being presented at COP27? Is it in writing? Is there a specific set of financial requests or demands being made by specific countries against other countries? How do the complexities having to do with some of the Gulf Arab states, as you were describing, or China as you were describing, fit in?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: It's a messy picture, but here are a couple of the highlights. For a number of years, this argument about loss of damage has been advocated by G77, a group of developing countries, the small Island countries, the most vulnerable, as well as the environmental NGOs, and humanitarian NGOs. I'm an attorney, NGOs, it's advise and support them. It's gotten nowhere, mainly because rich countries blocked it from being on the official agenda.

However, it began to gain some traction and there was a breakthrough on the first day of the summit. When I first got there to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on the very first day, the rich countries acknowledged and allowed this to become a live item for discussion on the first opening day. That was actually the first time it's really become an official topic and in the course of the last 10 days, now we're getting towards the last few days of the summit, it has actually been a official point of debate and discussion.

Now, does this mean that there's going to be a massive new facility with enough money to deal with this problem announced in a few days when the summit's over? No chance. That's not going to happen. On the other hand, since it's now officially acknowledged in UN legalese, it's here to stay. That what's likely to happen, this is my judgment of it and we'll know in the next few days, there's going to be some very intense negotiations coming up in the next few days leading up to the culmination of the summit.

I think mainly because Joe Biden, who turned up at the summit and gave a speech that was actually very well received. I was in a plenary hall when he gave his lecture and the American president coming with a lot of climate legislation that America's passed it back home and wanting to engage with the world. It's not often that American presidents are welcomed at these climate summits. Often, Americans as with George W. Bush and Donald Trump, they pulled America out of the UN Summit out of the UN process and so America's seen as a problematic country.

He was well received John Kerry is serious in his intent. I think this administration wants to engage and keep goodwill, keep the ball moving so I think we're likely to see, and that's the reason why we're seeing this issue at the level of a talking shop, we might even see some facility or talks to set up a financial facility, be set up by the end of this COP. It won't be funded probably at this time, but how much money will come in at the next round, is the way the UN works. They have a talking shop it keeps going but I do see some progress on this.

If you ask me how much does it matter, is it going to solve the problem or make a big dent? My instinct is no, this is not the way we're going to deal with the bigger problem. The reason is there may be some billions of dollars that are put into this. That sounds like a lot, but it's not. The scale of the climate challenge requires trillions of dollars of capital to go from the rich world to the developing world and a lot of it has to do with shifting the energy system away from burning dirty fuels in the developing world as well so that their pathway can be a green leapfrog.

They can have lots of opportunities not to burn their coal and natural gas resources if possible but also, for adaptation, helping them adapt as well as of course, dealing with the immediacy of crises that come, like the massive floods we saw in Pakistan or other emergencies. There's three buckets and we're going to need in the trillions of dollars, no UN facility like this could be possibly enough. That's not how it's going to be solved. This is more of a political symbolism in my view.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're in our climate story of the week for this week, the week of the COP27 Climate Conference taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Our guest is Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy and climate innovation editor at The Economist who, as you hear, has been reporting on COP27 and our central question. We'll get to other aspects of the conference too, but our central question is about the proposal for the wealthier, more global warming greenhouse gas emitting countries of the world, US Europe, Japan.

Also though China, with the complexity of them producing so many greenhouse gases, but also having a lot of poor people themselves and the Gulf States, should the wealthy emitting countries of the world, they've done most of the emitting and have most of the money, pay reparations of any sort to the developing countries suffering the worst effects. We have a lot of phone calls coming in on this with a lot of interesting points of view. Let's start with Allie in Ridgewood in Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Allie.

Allie: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you for talking about this. I just was wondering if your guest could maybe speak to the possibility if there is one. There is one, but if there's it's being discussed of holding corporate leaders accountable in addition to wealthier nations or nation states such as the CEOs of these gas companies, the CEOs of companies like Amazon, which is responsible for a lot of the driving-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Just if there's any discussion of that type of thing and legislatively or in terms of process, what that would look like and if he thinks that's a part of that could be a part of this discussion. I just feel like we're living under the thumbs of a lot of these CEOs and so I'm curious what type of recourse we might have there.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great question. Vijay, does it come up in that way at all at these COP conferences?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: The official process of the UN COP negotiators will not point the finger at the CEO of Chevron or Exxon or Saudi Aramco. That's not how this process will works or how it works. There can always be press conferences and activists pointing fingers. COP26, the last year's big conference in Glasgow. When the Shell boss turned up at a site event, he was mocked and ridiculed and chased out, for example.

There can be informal finger point anything, but there will be no un finger-pointing at oil bosses. On the other hand, if you look at the legal process, there are new kinds of novel legal theories being tested to sue the polluter. There's a case involving a German utility, RWE one of the big ones that is now making its way on exactly this question of attribution and so we might see some form of legal remedy, but probably not on the UN stage.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Let's take another call. We'll go next to Rohan in Piscataway, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rohan.

Rohan: Hi. Thank you. I wanted to know how the reparation [inaudible 00:18:23] the United States and other countries should give them the technological knowledge[unintelligible 00:18:33]. There's a lot of inefficiency in certain countries and there may be corruption as well involved so I think that this way it'll help the people directly.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I think you were starting to get at something like that before, Vijay, reparations in terms of, okay let's just pay damages in unattached cash payments as opposed to building infrastructure as the caller suggests because another way that we've had this conversation on the show, another way that the world is having the conversation is the underdeveloped countries of the world want to be able to develop their economies and have more prosperity.

The way that this has been done in the rich countries over the last century is largely through fossil fuels and nobody wants them to do it through fossil fuels, but the other technologies aren't ready yet at a cheap enough cost at the mass scale that it would take for major economic development and so rather than just make cash payments, the wealthy country should be subsidizing renewable energy infrastructure in a big way. Is that another way of asking the same question?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Well, in legalese, it's not the same thing, but in my mind, and you're on the same page that I am, let's roll up our sleeves and deal with this problem, the problem of climate change and its effects is such a monumental problem. It seems to me a distraction or worse to get caught up with, again, the UN process and setting up what was almost certainly going to be a relatively small and irrelevant fund in terms of the amount of money for the sake of tokenism or symbolism. I understand why countries feel aggrieved about it, but in fact, the scale of the challenge is much, much bigger.

On this front, there's actually some positive news. If we actually look away from Egypt where the UN summit is taking place to another stage, which is the big G20 summit that's just been going on in Indonesia, President Biden actually flew from Egypt to Asia where he attended the G20 summit. A significant partnership was announced between a number of the rich countries that are members of the G20 collection of rich countries. With the US leading the way, Indonesia signed on to a deal worth perhaps $20 billion. It's real money.

About half of that will come from official sources like governments and the World Bank, and Asian Development Bank, about half of it will come from banks and private sector entities. The purpose is to help retire that country's enormous fleet of coal plants a lot earlier than they would otherwise be retired and to finance clean energy, solar, wind, and geothermal, of which Indonesia has an abundance of potential. It is located very well for having a lot of sun and has a lot of potential in other renewables.

Getting below market access, loans, and affordable capital as well as technology to make it happen. The technological capacity, to me, that's a more bottom-up innovative approach that is a coalition of the willing. It's a handful of countries. They have capacity, they have money, they have a willing recipient, in the case of Indonesia, one of the world's biggest coal exporters and users.

That's a lot more productive to me than having 200-plus countries banging the drum and showing off and demanding almost impossible things. To me, I'm more of a practical guy and I think more deals like that and there are other deals in the works with Vietnam, potentially with India and some other countries. I think we could actually see real progress.

Brian Lehrer: I know you also reported on President Biden and President Xi of China, actually, despite all the competition between the United States and China right now, having what looked like a productive conversation about moving forward together again on climate. I want you to describe that when we come back in a minute. We'll also take more of your calls. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with our climate story of the week because this is the week of the COP27 Climate Conference that President Biden and other world leaders have attended in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that's where we're focusing. We're focusing primarily on one of the issues at the conference, should wealthy countries that cause the most warming pay reparations to poorer countries in the global south suffering the worst effects? We're taking your calls and speaking with Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy & climate innovation editor at The Economist who's been reporting on COP27. Vijay, can you talk about Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, and Indonesia and what they talked about with respect to climate?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Sure. this is another small ray of hope coming out of this period. Even during the COP27 session, the first week of it, we're into the second week now, John Kerry, who leads the US Climate delegation began to have talks with his Chinese counterparts. That was actually quite significant given the well-known hostility we've had between the two countries over Taiwan and semiconductor ships and numerous issues.

The Chinese had put a stop on cooperation on climate slightly as a punishment or to show their peak, and that did not bode well. These are the two biggest emitters in the world. You need America and China to be on the same page and row in the same direction if we're going to make meaningful progress on climate. The good news was, again, I think because this administration in Washington sees climate as a feather in its cap. That's something that Joe Biden can say. He did make progress on at home with the climate law that's been passed.

Overseas America has credibility again, which we did not have for a long time on the climate stage. I think that extending the olive branch, reaching out by Kerry in Sharm El-Sheikh was cemented by Joe Biden literally reaching out to Xi Jinping, walking across the stage. I think many listeners might have watched that on tv that was seen as making the extra effort to reach out to China in that moment.

I think that was well received by other Chinese. We're back on track for discussing and cooperation on climate, and I think that's good news. Of course, bear in mind, China also needs us to work on climate. They're going to be quite vulnerable to the effects of climate themselves but geopolitics can trump a lot of other issues. It's good that we're having a breakthrough on that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a COP27 question from Elise in Kingston. That's Kingston, New York, not Kingston, Jamaica. Elise, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Elise: Hello. Good morning, Brian, and good morning to your guest. Thank you so much for this segment. I was just wondering if it's ever been discussed that world leaders might hold these meetings remotely. I realize with time zone differences that would be a challenge but just to make a symbolic gesture about the admissions required to travel to meet in person.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Relevant to her question, one of the things that I see in conservative media sometimes, Vijay, I don't know if you've run into it too, is criticism of Biden and other, let's say, pro-doing something serious about climate change leaders, including activists in the private sector, taking very emitting plane rides. World leaders flying from all over the place to Egypt to talk about people not flying all over the place so much. It gets criticized as hypocrisy from the right, as a way of discrediting the whole idea but what about what Elise proposes, whether it's a remote COP28 next year, instead of in person or other ways to minimize the emissions that take place in the process of producing these conferences?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: The listener makes a very important point. It does take a lot of energy to fly people together and also to house them, feed them, air condition them, and all of those things that these conventions involve. There is a dilemma. Let's remember in the last couple of years because of COVID, there've actually been some Zoom-only gatherings, international summits, and gatherings that have been done by Zoom or other kinds of teleconferencing technologies I've sat in as a fly on the wall, and a couple of them on energy-related topics and climate-related topics. I would say that you can conduct routine work through Zoom meetings.

You can tick through a list of things that have already been agreed but you're not going to get big breakthroughs. In my experience and having covered these summits as well as others over many years for The Economist, you have something that happens when people get together, especially in negotiations, that you see the corridor talk. You see the breakthrough like that Xi handshake with Biden that we saw at the G20, and the fact that Biden was willing to walk the extra few steps to Xi, it made a huge deal of difference to the Chinese who care about these symbolic things.

I think we have seen breakthroughs happen because people are in the room, the room where it happens. That's not an argument for everyone to travel everywhere, to do everything, especially when billionaires have fancy parties and fly in tons of people on private jets for really no purpose other than their own enjoyment and self-aggrandizement. I think we can all agree that's ridiculous and a waste of resources.

When there's something important at stake and there's genuine disagreements among people who are representing their own countries with their constituents, I think there is a value to being in one place, in a sense, almost being locked up there. You can't leave, the pressures on and there's the deadline, the world is watching, the people who are watching be they activists or be they journalists are there watching you do your work and not making progress, I think there's something positive there.

Brian Lehrer: Kathy, in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hello, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi. What I wanted to ask is, and you may have covered this when I was talking to the young man on the phone, is there a way to align the interests of developing and developed nations, because telling throughout nations, you should do this, doesn't seem to get good results. We have these energy companies, these alternative green energy companies that really need to broaden their markets as much as they can to bring their prices down as fast as they can. Is there a way to bring those companies into developing nations to provide them with free green energy or something along those lines? I had a second question, but I think that was the one that's more pertinent.

Brian Lehrer: Kathy, thank you very much. Vijay, our climate story of the week last week with David Wallace from The New Yorker was about even as greenhouse gas emissions are continuing at a faster pace than the UN or other climate concern people think is safe. There is progress being made specifically in that the renewable energy market is flourishing and some countries are reaching a tipping point where there's more renewable energy being produced than traditional fossil fuel-related energy. Can you talk about that in general, and then to Kathy's specific question, is that a root to subsidizing the poorer nations to help them develop without contributing to the problem as much as we do?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Brian, you're absolutely right. There is some good news. Now listen, I don't want to be pollyannish. The general picture is not great. I'm not modifying that assessment. We need to do a lot more and a lot more quickly. However, there is some good news, and that is the deployment of renewable energy, particularly solar photovoltaic, has been phenomenal.

We're seeing this in a number of countries. I just did in depth briefing for my publication after spending some time in India, for example. Now India burns a lot of coal, like a lot of developing countries do, but it's also become the place with the cheapest solar energy on earth. It has great potential, but it's also invested. Their increase in solar output has in 50-fold in the last 10 years and investment in generation capacity.

In part, that's because of the amazing collapse in prices for new solar modules. Early on, we subsidized, the German subsidized. The Chinese scaled up and made inexpensive solar panels available. Today, it is cheaper in almost every part of the world to produce electricity from new solar plants than from new coal plants or new gas plants. That's generally true around the world.

That's a phenomenal thing. The market will prefer renewable energy where possible. Now the footnote to that is there's a lot of existing coal plants and they're often subsidized or coal mafias run them. It's not always easy to go ahead to head against an incumbent that subsidizes, but if you're talking about new generation, that's the good news.

That's why we've seen that deployment rate. I don't think giving away technology for free is a good business model. It's not likely to succeed, in my opinion. I think the costs have fallen so much. I think there's a way to do it that would subsidize the capital, for example, that is providing what's called blended finance, where the government can come in and take the first dollar risk on a project, but the private sector can provide five or 10 x that.

I think that's a model that's been very attractive that's now go about to take off. Something else we can think about is that we can imagine some forms of risk that's involved with investing in development countries. For example, the foreign exchange risk of investing in local currencies when most of the debt is usually carried in dollars for these projects.

There's some specific financial things where there's a lot of innovative finance now coming up. I'm very hopeful that these can be scaled up pretty fast in the next few years as in the case of that Indonesian example we talked about with that $20 billion deal.

Brian Lehrer: To wrap up, Vijay, when the conference ends, I think it's Friday, will there be a closing statement, and should we anticipate any news from that closing statement, including about this proposal for reparations?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: I've learned over the years not to make predictions about these UN summits. At an earlier summit in the Hague, Netherlands. I was standing close to the US negotiator when he had a pie in his face. Soon after the US pulled out at that summit, sometimes these summits fall apart in disarray. It's almost certainly not going to end on Friday. We'll go into the weekend, into the wee hours is quite likely.

I think because the US is turned up and wants to play ball, and the US is really the most important actor, and China has indicated that it's now going to be productive as well, rather than not productive. I think we're probably going to see a relatively harmonious end to this, maybe some agreement to have a facility on loss and damage. Without saying how much they'll probably agree to talk again in another UN forum going forward. I think that might be the face-saving way to have some success come out of this summit. Now, again, it's possible it'll all fall apart and go p-shaped, but I think that seems unlikely at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, did you say somebody say that the US pulled out of a past conference because somebody got a pie in the face?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: No, but the lead US negotiator for the Clinton administration got a pie sort in his face, and soon thereafter, the incoming George W. Bush administration pulled the US out of the treaty. The pie was not the reason we pulled out, the pie was a symbol of how even an administration like the Clinton administration, which was pro-climate, wanted to do a deal, was seen as somehow evil and hegemonic and the European activists didn't want to have anything to do with America. That just gives you an idea of sometimes a toxic atmosphere, that prevails with the politics of the UN. That's the point.

Brian Lehrer: I see. I thought maybe they got lemon meringue and they really wanted chocolate cream and they were just so offended. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy & climate innovation editor at The Economist who's been reporting on COP27. Thank you so much for joining us.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: It's been my pleasure.

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