The effort to save the pale blue dot called Earth is all about the green - that is, the money to finance a transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
The annual Climate Week NYC and United Nations General Assembly combination is putting special emphasis on how to generate trillions of dollars to help poorer countries move away from gas, oil and coal that emit greenhouse gases and heat the planet. They also need financial aid to deal with the damage the warming is already causing.
There's also a special U.N. summit of the future , which connects climate change and biodiversity to other pressing issues like war, and another U.N. special session on the threat of rising seas. And the presidents of climate negotiations in 2023, 2024 and 2025 are seeking to push nations into a new round of dramatic pollution cuts with their own efforts.
This week starts a two-month sprint in which three different cities on three different continents host high-level meetings that may be humanity's "last chance" to avoid exceeding globally agreed upon warming limits, according to one expert. After Climate Week in New York, Azerbaijan's capital of Baku hosts the U.N.'s 29th climate negotiation conference. Then, leaders of the 20 biggest countries head to Rio de Janeiro. And early next year, all the world's countries must submit new national targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
"A lot of the failure or success of (the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement) is going to be determined in the next, eight or nine months as countries put forward their next round of" proposed emission reduction goals, said longtime climate negotiations analyst Alden Meyer of the European think tank E3G. "If these don't step up and meet the mark, it's really our last chance."
