Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerfeld. And over the next couple months, I'm prepping to go to my very first cop. That stands for Conference of the Parties. It's an annual UN Climate Summit that brings together all the countries that are parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNF triple C.

It's true.

I've been a climate reporter for more than 20 years and have somehow managed to avoid going to cop all this time.

I'm going this year because it relates to a couple of projects we're working on for next year

and because the organizing committee from Brazil has vowed to make

climate information integrity a focus of this year's gathering. That's important because, as we'll

learn today, climate mis and disinformation is a huge part of the reason the world has not acted on

this issue. I'm also curious to get a front row seat because there's a real crisis of legitimacy happening

with the COPS.

This year is COP 30.

That means they've been happening for 30 years and we don't seem any closer to a global

solution to climate change than we were 30 years ago.

I'm also interested to see what happens when one of the world's biggest obstructors, the United States, decides not to go.

Who will pick up the slack?

Will it be Saudi?

Yes.

But also, Japan, even Europe, a lot of negotiators are heading into COP, wanting to protect their

countries, resources, their country's approach to markets, all of those things. So it will be interesting

to see what happens up close. And to get ready, I'm reading this new book from the Climate

Social Science Network that pulls together everything we currently know about climate

obstruction all over the world.

It's great prep for this conference.

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