Pay up: UN climate summit leader says funding key to success

PARIS (AP) — The British official who will preside over an upcoming U.N. climate summit says he’s losing sleep over how to get long-promised funding for poorer nations. Alok Sharma used a speech in Paris on Tuesday to jolt richer nations into action in the last weeks before the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Sharma said that securing a previously promised package of $100 billion in annual funding for poorer nations to switch to cleaner energy and cope with the worst impacts of climate change is vital to the success of the summit. He says thinking about the problem “does keep me awake at night.”