The United Nations’ “loss and damage”—”reparation”—fund for the climate was described in such manner by Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Unfortunately, President Joe Biden promised the United States will contribute to a recently created pool during the recently concluded COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
The fund is a result of industrialized countries’ 2009 commitment to provide $100 billion yearly to poor economies for climate change initiatives. Under no circumstances should Congress approve any contributions to the loss and damage fund.
After Biden’s announcement, Cleo Paskal, the author of ‘Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map,’ told me, “Arguments around the science and the transfer of money aside, the word ‘reparations’ implies having knowingly committed a wrong and feeds into a larger narrative of the West being the fount of all evil and so deserving of destruction.”
Some contend that the United States and other rich countries bear some of the blame for the centuries’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions that are now harming less developed countries.
In actuality, compared to other nations, the United States traditionally emits the most of these gases into the environment.
However, as Paskal, who is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notes, “the majority of U.S. emissions happened before 1990,” or before attention was paid to the role that human activity played in climate change. On the other side, Paskal claimed that China “is willfully committing the greatest wrong.” That nation emits approximately three times as much carbon as the United States, which is currently in second place. She stated, “Beijing does it intentionally, in part by snatching manufacturing from more environmentally conscious countries like the U.S.
The West-is-responsible narrative is nevertheless strongly supported by Beijing. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, stated during COP27, “China fully supports the claims of developing and vulnerable nations for “loss and damage.” “China is a developing nation, and this year’s climate calamities have also caused China significant losses. We totally understand the pain of poor nations and support all of their requests.
China, which is still regarded as a developing nation, was able to avoid being required to contribute to the loss and damage fund at COP27. Furthermore, China might still withdraw funds from the new pool. Burton said that third-world nations “were not prepared to reduce the effect of climate itself” at COP27.
