COP28’s big question: who should pay for the climate crisis?

Make Me Smart November 30, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

I could but don’t you want to hear me in my full robustness?

Kai Ryssdal 

Put that in the feed man.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, boy. It’s Thursday. Let’s do this.

Kai Ryssdal

Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams. Thank you for everyone, thank you, everyone for joining us on this Thursday, November the 3rd here. I’m gonna get it together

Kai Ryssdal 

Also thank you for everybody, we are going to listen back to some of the big stories of this week. We’ll play the tape, we’ll talk about it and then we will send you along your merry way. Let’s hit that first piece of tape.

Sultan Al Jaber

Let history reflect the fact that this is the presidency that made a bold choice to proactively engage with oil and gas companies.

Kai Ryssdal 

So that is from COP28. The Conference of the Parties I think is what COP stands for, 28. The guy speaking there was the president of the meeting, the head of the meeting this year Sultan Al Jaber speaking from Dubai. Here’s why that’s interesting. Number one, everybody’s saying that this is the summit where we have to get our act together. And of course, they’ve been saying that for the past 15 or 20 years. Number two, there is no small amount of controversy given that we’re having this whole big environmental conference about climate change in a place whose economy depends on the fossil fuels that create climate change number one. And number two, there were some documents that were leaked this week of briefing notes for Sultan Al Jaber, indicating that he planned to use his position as the Chair of the Conference and the government of Dubai in the UAE plan to use their position as the host of the conference to strike deals with oil and gas companies. And that’s kind of challenging, I think they have denied by the way, those reports, the good news is that the countries have already re agreed on a disaster fund to help nations rebuild from climate damage that has already happened. I will just point out that’s great. Right and that’s really, really good. The catch is, of course, that that Western, larger, developed economies have promised money before. And it’s not always enough. And it’s not always actually delivered. But you know, it’s happening, it’s happening.

Kimberly Adams 

And I think this is going to be the big fight on this issue moving forward is who should pay for the costs of recovering from and adapting to climate change, particularly in the developing world, right? Because these are countries that need lower cost for now, fossil fuels in order to catch up to the rest of the world, and often in situations where they were actively suppressed from development by the countries that benefited, you know, from exploiting their resources. And so now you have Germany giving I think, something like 100 million, 100 million dollars a year, the United States giving a lot less. The UAE I think also giving $100 million. And so, you know, the money is starting to flow. It’s not nearly enough. But it is sort of establishing a precedent that more developed countries should be paying for the cost of climate change. But how long that is going to be sustained especially as you know, these western countries in more developed countries themselves start seeing higher costs of climate disasters, it will be interesting to see for sure.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I think I think we should pay, we being the global north, the developed economies who have put most of this stuff into the atmosphere over the past 100ish years. That’s what I think.

Kimberly Adams 

Fair, I am inclined to agree. But here in the United States, we still don’t fully help people in the United States bear the cost of climate disasters, that is American citizens or people living here in the US. And so I think it’s going to be a very hard political sell, to say we should cover the cost of climate disasters elsewhere, even though it may be the right thing to do. But then also on top of that is is this idea that, you know, which how shall I say is what’s, what’s a nice way to say it? So if we’re not helping people here in the United States, to pay those costs, and how the migration thing is the next big thing, because that’s really what we’re expecting, is people leaving climate ravaged places, because they can no longer live there due to the effects of climate change, and trying to come to the more developed nations that have better resilience and better infrastructure. And so it’s one thing to pay these countries to help them adapt or respond to the, you know, horrible consequences of climate change. But then the other part is, if you are willing to accept some responsibility in terms of paying money, are you also willing to accept responsibility in terms of accepting the people who can no longer live in those places as a consequence?

Kai Ryssdal 

Look, the answer should be yes, yes and yes, yes, sir please, may I have another right? We have been doing this for 100 years, polluting this planet and expecting the lesser developed economies and the more marginalized people in this world, to bear the burden. It is now time for us to step up and pay what we owe morally and dollar wise. And I think the United States wants to be again, at some point, maybe, hypothetically,

Kimberly Adams 

Shining city on a hill.

Kai Ryssdal

Shining city on a hill. Right. Thank you very much, then I think leading the way on climate change, which we have not been doing is one way to do that.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Yeah. Much more discussion there. All right, let’s move on to the next piece of audio. This is from a conversation I had yesterday with Ayalla Ruvio, who is a marketing professor at Michigan State University.

Ayalla Ruvio

I think the holiday season overall will be fine. But the next year will determine whether or not we are going to actual recession, because consumers will hold back on their spending, or we will reach to a level of economy that is is sustainable. And consumer can not overspend, but live comfortably without going into a recession.

Kimberly Adams 

So I don’t usually cover a ton of retail, because you know, I live and breathe politics. But I happen to have done quite a few retail stories leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday in the last couple of weeks. And boy have I learned so many interesting things, including that the holiday season is stretching longer, because people have less money to spend due to inflation. So they’re shopping harder for deals. But retailers are super paranoid, that once people spend what money they do have, that’s it for the season. So that’s why you’re seeing these Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals being extended to like Wednesday and Thursday of this week, because everybody who can get your dollars are trying to get them before they run out. Because what’s going to happen in a couple of weeks when those credit card bills start showing up is a lot of retailers and a lot of retail analysts are expecting a drastic pullback in spending. Because even though the top line, Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday weekend, spending numbers are higher than last year and years before, when you factor in inflation. People are on average spending less, they’re getting less stuff for spending more money. And a lot of the shopping is people stocking up on necessities. But while they can get them on sale, much less so than, you know buying more frivolous goods. And one of the things that kept coming up over and over again, is this idea that nobody really knows yet whether or not consumers are sort of binging on the sales and discounts in order to pull back later, which could contribute to a more I won’t even say a recession but a recessionary environment. Or if we’re just going to keep, you know, closing our eyes and covering our ears and hoping for the best and, and spending as if there’s no tomorrow because you know, if you’re going to be in debt forever, you may as well be.

Kai Ryssdal 

My money is on the American consumer to do what it has historically done, what he, she has already historically done, which is to close their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and go lalalalala and pull out the credit card. That’s I mean, we’ve been doing that forever.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I mean, as long as debt is manageable and sustainable, I think that was the status quo, but with interest rates so high, I don’t know. I mean, I was talking to the CEO of VantageScore, which is a credit scoring agency. And he was saying that credit card delinquencies across all categories and I’m talking 15 days late, 30 days late, 60 to 90 days late are all up. Right, and this holiday shopping season is coming as student loan repayments are starting to come due again, as you know, mortgage interest rates are very high. And so I know we’ve been saying this for a year, but consumers may be at the breaking point. But you know, again, we’ve been saying that for ages so we’ll see. Right agree yeah. All right, next clip. Let’s hear it.

George Santos

If I leave, they win. If I leave the bullies take place this is bullying. The rep, the chair of the committee putting out a motion to expel just introducing it and not calling its privilege was designed to force me to resign.

Kai Ryssdal 

No you get that one.

Kimberly Adams 

You just don’t want to touch it, do you? Well, that was George Santos, the Congressperson from New York talking to reporters this morning. Santos said he will not resign ahead of the House vote on whether or not to expel him. A lot of members of Congress, several members of Congress proposed resolutions to expel him after the House Ethics Committee releases released its report that found more than substantial evidence that he knowingly filed incomplete reports with the Federal Elections Commission that he used campaign funds for personal use to put it generously. Among many other violations. Speaker Johnson said yesterday had he had real reservations about expelling Santos. If he’s expelled, he’d be the first house member to be ousted without having been convicted, or having supported the Confederacy. But that said, it seems like the winds are blowing to oust him in terms of, you know, some members of Congress who were hesitant to do so without, you know, air, quote, due process are now on board. But that GOP majority is extraordinarily thin. And with all of these looming resignations, if not the resignations we’ve had about to get thinner, and it will be very fascinating to see. And I know cynical Kai is going to laugh me when I see these words out loud. Where people’s moral standards on how a member of the House should behave land when it comes to the the majority stake. Yeah, go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

No, I got, I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say, this is actually a really good test of where the Republican Party in the House is. And this is not a hard call. It’s not a hard call. I not. I mean, come on.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, OnlyFans, like just I fully respect the work of sex workers and you know, God bless them. But really, with your campaign funds, come on.

Kai Ryssdal 

And the next piece of tape, let’s go

Austan Goolsbee

Anybody who cooks a turkey knows that you got to pull it out of the oven before it’s to the point where you want it to be because it’s going to have residual heat. And if you just keep cooking the thing for too long. They’re gonna be like, “Mommy, why is Uncle Kai’s Turkey so hard to chew?”

Kai Ryssdal 

So that was Austan Goolsbee, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, former head of the CEA under Obama, also a part time standup comic at one point in his professional career, I think he was voted the funniest economist in Washington. Anyway, so I asked him on the program the other day, you know, how much longer you can keep interest rates high? Because are you worried about overshooting? And he came up with what I thought was a really good example of the turkey. You know, you gotta take the turkey out of the oven a little bit early, so that it doesn’t get overcooked. The implication being maybe we need to be done with raising interest rates so that the slowdown of the economy doesn’t get overcooked. I thought it was a pretty good analogy.

Kimberly Adams 

If you want salmonella.

Kai Ryssdal 

I, no, come on. Come on, you take it out at 145 or 165, whatever it is, right and you let it rest. You don’t sit sit it in there till it’s 210 on the internal and the juices are running clear, but they’re freaking fried because you’ve over done it. Go with the roll, with the analogy roll.

Kimberly Adams

That’s what an oven bag is for.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh my lordy be, don’t take the don’t take the turkey thing, take the interest rate thing. That’s what you’re supposed to take out of that.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m sorry, as someone who has made an actual Thanksgiving turkey many times I take issue with this but you know, I’ll leave it to the listeners to weigh in on whether or not you take turkey out of the oven before it’s fully cooked.

Kai Ryssdal 

Let’s go. We’re done.

Kimberly Adams 

That is it for today. You can join us tomorrow for economics on top. The YouTube live stream starts at 6:30 Eastern, 3:30 Pacific. We will be joined by Amy Scott who is out with a new season of our climate solutions podcast “How We Survive” and she’s bringing a special kind of beer which I actually plan to attempt to drink and it for your sake Kai. It is not an IPA.

Kai Ryssdal

Special kind of IPA, but you know I’m not gonna spoil the surprise. Let’s go Drew, let’s go. I’m stealing Amy Scott’s joke there and I give her a hard time on the Slack channel. For today’s episode of Make Me Smart, which is this podcast somehow, was produced by Courtney Bergsieker with assistance today from H Conley. Drew Jostad is in charge, on the other side of the glass here in the studio. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and sure why not on demand as well.