From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Tuesday, October 29th.

Now to our climate story of the week, and this week we'll hear about COP16, the UN Biodiversity Summit, dubbed by my next

guest, Benji Jones from Vox, as, quote, the most important event you've never heard of.

Representatives from nearly every country on Earth are gathered in Colombia to tackle how to stop

the alarming loss of plant and animal species that keep our planet and us alive and thriving.

The key takeaway, biodiversity is in stark decline. Wild animals, Benji writes, are spiraling

toward extinction. More than a third of the world's tree species are at risk of extinction.

And what's the U.S. been doing to protect the natural world?

Well, one of Benji's stories that we'll talk about is headlined,

Every country is negotiating a plan to save nature except the U.S.

Benji Jones, Environmental Correspondent at Vox, welcome back to WNYC.

Hey, good to be with you.

And listeners, we can take your phone calls, questions, or comments on biodiversity and the UN

COP16 meeting, as it's called, going on right now.

You called it the most important event you've never heard of.

Explain why you think so.

Yeah, so when it comes to all the environmental problems that we're facing as a planet, as a society, I think we've seen

climate change really rise to the surface. And it's been amazing to see so much mobilization around

clean energy, around transitioning dirty fuel economies into cleaner ones, to help lower emissions, to cool down the planet.

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