For a moment, I want you to imagine that we're in a bar at the end of a long night.

At least it was a long night for Scott Detro over here.

He's been drinking top shelf booze for hours.

It happens.

I showed up a while ago and ordered some appetizers and beer,

and no green-filled voice over there showed up late and had a diet cook.

That's my thing.

And now the check has arrived.

One big fat check.

We'll explain what dividing this check has to do with the upcoming climate talks in Paris in just a second.

But first...

This is the NPR Politics podcast, and I'm Tamara Keith.

I'm Scott Detro. I cover politics, but for a while I covered energy in the environment.

And I'm no green-filled voice. I cover science.

Nell is our very first non-politics team visitor to the podcast.

So welcome, Nell, and cheers.

I feel very honored to be over from the humble science desk to the big leagues of politics.

So now almost 200 countries are getting together in Paris starting Sunday.

What are they trying to accomplish?

So this is the United Nations effort to have the world come together for a ambitious new global

agreement to try to get global warming in check.

And so basically you have representatives from all these countries there to hammer out some sort of

...