Payment past due
What are the nations going to be talking about in Sharm El-Sheikh this week? Payments due.
Last year’s UN climate conference in Glasgow delivered a host of pledges on emissions cuts, finance, net zero, forest protection and more.
Yay pledges! Unless…they haven’t been carried out?
Egypt says their conference will be about implementing these pledges.
What that really means is it will be all about cash, and specifically getting wealthy nations to come good on their promises of finance to help the developing world tackle climate change.
So expect the main battle lines to be between the north and south, between rich and poor nations.
And expect the rich nations to do the least they can possibly get away with. Pledging they can do, action not so much.
Top of Egypt’s “to-do” list is the $100bn (£89bn) a year developed countries promised way back in 2009 to help the developing world cut emissions and adapt to our changing climate.
Listen, the developed countries have been having a hard time, the kids are all in expensive schools, we had to buy them all SUVs, holidays in Venice and the Swiss Alps don’t come cheap, we’re taking a cruise next year – we just don’t have the cash right now. Or ever.
Europe and the US have agreed there should be a formal discussion of the issue but are unlikely to make commitments of cash.
They worry the costs will spiral into trillions of dollars as the impacts of climate change get more severe in years to come.
So what they plan to do instead is nothing, which will make the impacts of climate change pack up and go away.
I very much doubt that any nation in line to make those payments ever thought for a second that they would. If they’d been serious, for starters they would have been saying to their populaces that if reductions were not made they would liable. It’s never happened. There has certainly never been any hint of popular discussion of this liability that I’ve picked up.
Instead, I think governments have assumed that technology or frankly some miracle would save them. On the part of those who mostly believed in climate change it was a hope in a technological save whereas for those who didn’t believe it was more a hope that this time the scientists would prove to be utterly wrong. Sadly the technology is decades behind where it needs to be because the capitalist markets were not sent strong and consistent signals early enough, and the scientists were right. As they tend to be when the message is consistent for decades on end. If anything, increased scientific understanding has actually made the picture worse as the more we understand the feedback loops, the more we recognise this is happening faster and worse than was expected.
Call me a cynic, but I would bet that someone in the halls of power is doing the calculations and figures that a ‘fail fast’ scenario is actually to the benefit of rich nations. yes, they will be badly damaged, but because of their wealth and technical expertise they may adapt more readily than poor nations which will suffer catastrophic flooding, famine, and war deeper and earlier than rich nations will. If rich nations spend their wealth trying to assist poor nations, we’ll all come out of the other end about the same. Can’t have that now can we?
In a recent article
David Wallace-Wells “Beyond Catastrophe A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View” Oct. 26, 2022 (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html)
one sentence stays with me.
“Normalization is a form of adaptation, too, however cruel and unfortunate a form it may appear in theory or ahead of time.”
It’s been obvious for a long time now that none of the endless climate talks, and summits, and non-binding “aspirational” goals are even meant to result in meaningful action. Not as far as First World countries are concerned anyway. The Third World doesn’t get a say in the matter. I’d say the real goal is buying time and keeping up a minimal appearance of effort until the next summit. Repeat
ad infinitumuntil we’re all dead. In the meantime, every First World country can count on the unwillingness of every other First World country to provide a perpetual alibi for their own inaction. It’s almost moving to see such a complete and unanimous consensus from the furthest left to the furthest right.RIshi Sunak has let England know that this will increase the tax rates he and Jeremy are going to implement.
Rising fuel prices, according to market theory, would lead people to put pressure on manufacturers to step up the availability of alternate fuel or electric cars. Instead it has been leading to people deciding to vote for the Republicans in the US who promise to lower them. I have no idea how, if they actually believe in less government. Biden has responded by taking from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which just kicks the can down the road.
We have a rich and meaningful choice between governments that have no intention of doing anything about global warming and governments that would love to do something about global warming if only they could but alas they can’t.
One of the problems is that these treaties usually don’t have any enforcement measures. Okay, we’ll set fines, but we have no way of making the nations pay the fines. It’s not like traffic court, where a string of unpaid fines gets you in dutch enough to get thrown in jail. The rich nations hold all the cards, plus the fifth ace.
As long as voters vote based on gas prices, the government is going to do as little as possible. Dems will put on a few bandages, but the GOP will rip them off again the second they get in power. I’m not sure which is worse: hiding the bleeding wound so no one sees it, or exposing the wound to infection.