Brian Lerer on WNYC, and now our Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show,

first climate and then teaching science in school in a politicized time. We'll do that one later with a call in for

teachers on this day off from school, plus somebody who wrote a book about teaching science,

who used to be a New York City science teacher. But the climate section first, the 2025 United Nations

Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, that's a mouthful,

opened in Brazil this week.

The meeting is more commonly known as COP 30, 30 because it marks the 30th anniversary of the

beginning of formal UN negotiations on climate change.

But this year, breaking a longstanding tradition, the U.S. will not play an

active role in the talks. No high-level White House officials are attending COP 30. And at least

according to the Guardian, some world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. Last month in London,

officials met to rubber stamp plants for a small levy on greenhouse gas emissions caused by shipping. U.S. representatives were accused of using bully-like behavior, the article says, to force countries to drop the plan, issuing threats of higher fees for docking in American ports and imposing visa restrictions for

negotiators and their families. Trump had called the proposal a global green new scam tax on shipping.

Well, sure enough, the pollution fee is now delayed at least for a year.

A former senior State Department official told the Guardian, before it was benign neglect, even in Trump's first term, now it's quite the opposite.

They don't want to participate and they don't want others to either. So the Guardian asks,

could COP 30 be better off without the Trump administration at

all rather than a presence that's destructive? And to the larger question, how's the climate doing

30 years on from the start of this process and what can the conference achieve? Joining us now to

break down the latest from COP 30 and some history of how we got here

are Paula DiPerna Policy Consultant, author of Pricing the Priceless, and co-author of a new book,

Carbon Hunters, Reflections and Forecasts of Climate Markets in the 21st Century,

...