LEILA FADEL, HOST:
World leaders are gathering this week in Belem, Brazil, for the annual U.N. climate conference, and hanging over talks this year is a question. Is the U.S. even going to show up? Joining me now is Julia Simon from NPR's climate desk, who will be covering the talks. Julia, welcome.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Thank you, Leila.
FADEL: So on his first day back in office, Trump said he's pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the landmark global agreement to try to limit global warming. Second time he's done that. Does anyone think the Trump administration will show up the next few weeks at the U.N. climate conference?
SIMON: The administration says that they're not sending a high-level delegation. In an emailed statement, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers says, President Trump will not jeopardize our country's economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals.
FADEL: OK, Julia. So that sounds like they're unlikely to show up.
SIMON: Unlikely, yes. And, look, if the U.S. doesn't show up, some world leaders would actually sigh with relief because some have been concerned that the U.S. might hamper the talks. The U.S. recently used these really hardball tactics to block new pollution taxes on the global shipping industry. But in the past, notably under Obama, the U.S. did help move these climate negotiations along. That almost certainly won't happen in Brazil. And, look, the U.S. is the second-biggest polluter in the world, so the U.S. will eventually need to come on board to cut climate emissions. As for the other G20 countries - G20 countries are 80% of emissions - they're going to have to step up in the meantime.
FADEL: Whether the U.S. shows up or not, the conference is happening. What are they trying to achieve?
SIMON: Yeah. Well, the Paris Agreement was a decade ago, so now countries have to actually act on their plans to cut emissions. This conference is about pivoting from negotiation to implementation. Donor countries need to step up and give money to developing countries to help them adapt to global warming. But we're at this moment when the U.S. and also the EU - they're pulling back from international aid. The U.S. is pulling back from the U.N. Kaveh Guilanpour of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions says this year, there's a bigger question about the state of multilateralism. That is countries coming together to achieve a common goal.
KAVEH GUILANPOUR: What ministers from around the world have been consistently saying this year is that COP30 has not only to deliver an outcome for climate, but it needs to show that multilateralism itself is still the way forward to deal with global common problems.
FADEL: OK. So some big stakes and big challenges.
SIMON: For sure.
FADEL: Yeah. And then we're seeing already global temperature records broken, dangerously warm oceans and die-offs of coral reefs. What's this all mean for the fight to slow global warming?
SIMON: So when it comes to tackling climate change, there are really these two big driving forces. On the one side, there's the politics, like this U.N. climate conference. But then there's the other driving force - the economics. Here's Li Shuo of the Asia Society.
LI SHUO: The other very important dimension is the green economic transition.
SIMON: The green economic transition. And that's really where a lot of the good news for the planet is right now, Leila. A lot of this good news is coming from China. China is not only building massive, massive amounts of solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles. They're also making this tech more affordable, exporting it around the world, and with all this new renewable energy, China's climate emissions seem to have peaked or are nearing their peak. So we will see what happens at this climate conference. But despite the political challenges, Li Shuo says the green economic transition, Leila, is marching on around the world.
FADEL: That's NPR's Julia Simon. Thank you, Julia.
SIMON: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 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 NPR鈥檚 programming is the audio record.
