The World Is a Decade Late and $2 Trillion Short

Watching another chaotic United Nations climate confab end in disappointment brings to mind that old saw, incorrectly ascribed to Winston Churchill, about America always doing the right thing, but only after it has exhausted every alternative. Except in this case the world’s polluting nations are stuck in the “exhausting alternatives” phase and are quickly running out of time to do the right thing.

We can at least be glad that COP29 — this year’s conference for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Baku, Azerbaijan — didn’t end in complete disaster like 2009’s gathering in Copenhagen. After days of bare-knuckle brawling and the near-collapse of negotiations, the bloodied parties staggered away with a commitment from developed nations to triple the amount of money they spend to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to global heating, to $300 billion from $100 billion per year, by 2035. They also vowed to put together a decade-long “roadmap” for hitting the $1.3 trillion in annual financing that poorer countries had demanded. And they established a global carbon-credits market and paid vague homage to a pledge made last year to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels.