I’ve actually been home from Egypt for a couple of days, so this final dispatch comes in part from talking to people still in the conference center at Sharm El-Sheikh where—with utter predictability—talks went into 24 hours of overtime before finally concluding in the early morning hours Sunday.

The talks produced one real success: civil society had focused on getting the rich nations to agree to a ‘loss and damage’ fund, and at the last minute they did just that. It was a triumph for movement organizers from the global south—for groups like the Climate Action Network—that made the issue the unrelenting focus of their efforts in the lead-up to this COP, and for good reason: as Reuters reported

55 vulnerable countries estimated their combined climate-linked losses over the last two decades totalled $525 billion, or 20% of their collective GDP. Some research suggests that by 2030 such losses could reach $580 billion per year.

Read those numbers again—they are astonishing (a fifth of GDP!) and there is no doubt where justice […]