What’s at stake at the upcoming world climate conference

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• Hari Sreenivasan:

  Global environmental leaders wrapped up a meeting in Italy this weekend preparing for the United Nations Climate Summit in Scotland that begins at the end of this month.

  World leaders including President Biden will gather as global average temperatures continue rising and pledges to reduce greenhouse gases go unmet.

  I spoke with the New York Times International Climate Reporter Somini Sengupta on Friday about the accelerating climate crisis.

  Somini, get us up to speed about kind of where we are heading into these negotiations. What is the world supposed to be aware of?

• Somini Sengupta:

  So that is exactly the right question. This is where we are right now. We are on track to actually grow emissions by 2030, even if every country that has made these climate promises keeps those climate promises. And therefore, we are on track to accelerate global warming. So the latest statement from the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres was we are still on a catastrophic pathway.

• Hari Sreenivasan:

  During these meetings, there's usually a tension between the haves and the have nots. What is the role that the United States and China and India and Brazil play in this?

• Somini Sengupta:

  I am really watching what are these large polluting economies going to say about their ambitions? How is the rich world going to help the poorer countries? So there is a promise of $100 billion a year starting in 2020. That money is still not on the table. There is still a shortfall and that has created quite a diplomatic tension, as you can imagine between the rich and poor countries of the world.

• Hari Sreenivasan:

  Ironically, sea levels don't rise equally in in the context that not all countries will suffer the impacts of what's happening around us the same as we do.

• Somini Sengupta:

  Rich countries are facing the impacts of climate change, especially in recent years. But the effects of climate change exacerbate poverty, poor health, hunger, displacement, even in times the effects of conflict, as we have seen in Afghanistan.

• Hari Sreenivasan:

  I'm imagining that the rest of the world is also watching our kind of internal politics to see what the Biden administration is able to pull off when it comes to the infrastructure bill or the overall spending bills that are happening and what he shows up with in terms of authority to make pledges.

• Somini Sengupta:

  The Biden administration's ability to keep the promise rests on whether it can pass the legislation that it has proposed rests on whether it can get Congress to come along with it. And of course, the question of money also requires the blessings of Congress. Whether the Biden administration can deliver money rests on whether he can get everyone on board, and that is something that the world is watching very, very carefully.

• Hari Sreenivasan:

  Now, the pope recently came out and blessed the young people who were trying to make their voices heard about climate change. What are you hearing about people from all sorts of places, the young people and others trying to make an impact on the policies that are going to come out of these conferences?

• Somini Sengupta:

  Yeah. For the last couple of years, you've seen tremendous generational pressure, I would say, from young people in all kinds of countries, in rich countries and poor countries and small countries and large countries. And the test is really for politicians, for world leaders how they're going to respond to these pressures, particularly so in democratic countries where these are either current or future voters.

• Hari Sreenivasan:

  Somini Sengupta of The New York Times. Thanks so much.

• Somini Sengupta:

  Thank you.