Emission creep: a contentious COP closes
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
It is telling and troubling that the annual climate talking-shop’s outcome did not even mention fossil fuels. We ask whether the COP process is still fit for purpose. Cryptocurrencies could be heading for an almighty fall: what would they take down with them? And the revealing vowels and diphthongs of whale communications. (Hear much more on animal communication in our series on “Babbage”: part 1 asks whether animals truly have language, and part 2 whether AI could translate it.)
Additional audio courtesy of Project CETI.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:10.3 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.8 | I'm Rosie Bloor. |
| 0:15.0 | And I'm Jason Palmer. |
| 0:16.4 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:24.6 | Thank you. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. When Bitcoin was launched almost 17 years ago, it sounded like a mad idea. |
| 0:30.6 | Now it's widely accepted, but some investors have got a little jittery of late. |
| 0:35.6 | Could crypto have run its course? |
| 0:39.8 | And the effort to make sense of the vocalizations of whales |
| 0:43.5 | has thrown up an intriguing finding. |
| 0:45.9 | They use vowels. |
| 0:47.6 | We discuss what that means for them |
| 0:49.2 | and for our ability to understand them. |
| 1:02.0 | Thank you. our ability to understand them. First up, though. |
| 1:07.0 | Most inhabitants of Belain were too busy to care about the 30th edition of the United Nations annual climate conference, or COP. |
| 1:19.6 | Alessandro Ford writes about Brazil. |
| 1:22.6 | In an Uber ride into the Brazilian city, my driver grunted when I asked what he thought. We passed people |
| 1:28.7 | queuing for buses, hurrying to work, or wolfing down a quick pastel de quesue, cheese pasty, |
| 1:34.6 | and goyaba juice at the popular food trucks. Yet the decision to hold cop here was a strategic one. |
| 1:42.2 | It is at the forefront of the climate crisis. Hot and steamy every day |
| 1:47.6 | the rains crash down. Every winter, the Guamara River breaks its banks and some 40% of the city |
| 1:55.4 | sits below sea level. Some locals worried the waters will one day swallow the city whole. |
... |
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