Most people look to the annual Conference of the Parties, or COP, summit to get a sense of where things stand in global efforts to address climate change. Often overlooked are the technical meetings that take place in Bonn, Germany, in between the COP gatherings, and which are a key indicator of progress on the most important issue of our time.
The latest of these gatherings just wrapped up two weeks ago, leaving an uncertain path to achieving global climate goals at the United Nations COP29 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November. Representatives of the world’s governments failed to agree on much, dampening hopes of achieving the goals of limiting average global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees C and phasing out fossil fuels.
The ongoing costs of climate-fueled events are increasingly evident, with individual incidents that incur $1 billion in damages now a common occurrence in the United States. The World Meteorological Organization anticipates up to $1.2 quadrillion in climate-fueled damages worldwide by 2100 if nothing changes.