The sleek private jets winging their way to the Arabian Desert, where Dubai, United Arab Emirates is hosting this year’s UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP) confab, are carrying their typical load of high rollers from the corporate and foundation world, all of them eager to show their grave concern for the future of the planet’s climate.
At COP 28 (for the 28th such gathering), they will join hands with delegates from well over 100 countries and thousands of climate activists to bewail the inevitable disaster facing the earth unless urgent measures are taken to counter the “climate crisis.” If all of this sounds drearily like previous COPs, take heart: The script for COP 28 has been flipped. Yes, countries will again pledge to slash their carbon emissions by a date certain. But such promises (which were never kept) will now have to take a backseat to the real business of COP 28: money – and lots of it.
Now it’s time for industrialized countries to make amends for all the climate-related suffering they are said to be inflicting on poorer countries. And what better way to do that than by forking over loads of cash to those who present themselves as victims of fossil fuels.
“Loss and Damage Fund”
The transition from emissions targets to cool cash has been swift. A UN report released last year said that at least $2 trillion yearly by 2030 will be needed by developing countries to cope with climate-related disasters and to help them down the path of “sustainable” energy use. Various green development funds – transfers of taxpayer money from predominantly middle-income earners in wealthy countries to rich elites in poor countries – have been proposed at previous COP meetings. But the pot of gold never materialized, because most industrialized country no more kept their financial commitments than they did their emissions-targets commitments.
At Dubai, the slush fund has been rebranded as the “Loss and Damage Fund;” it’s now being proposed under the guise of paying for “loss and damage” incurred by poorer countries. Think of it as a form of climate reparations. The recipients not only have their hands out for taxpayer money. They also hope to pocket largess from the private sector. Purveyors of green energy, many of them already well healed, are eager to get into the game.
“In the clean-energy transition, investments can be the major driver for progress,” said Jake Levine, the chief climate officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., a federal agency that helps fund economic development in poor countries,” the Washington Post (Nov. 30) reported.
COP 28 is crawling with private-sector investors and “philanthropists” licking their chops over the deals they hope to close that will bring such things as solar panels and windmills to impoverished communities in the Global South.
“The sideshow is now the big tent,” Beth Viola told the Post. She should know. Viola is an energy lobbyist at the silk-stocking law firm of Holland & Knight who served in the Clinton administration and as an environmental adviser to Al Gore when he ran for president and to John Kerry when he was in the U.S. Senate.
Kerry is heading the U.S. delegation in Dubai but will be joined later by Vice President Kamala Harris. Joe Biden is sitting this one out as is China’s Xi Jinping. Kerry is reported to be seeking an agreement to clamp down on methane emissions, a not-too-subtle way of crippling natural gas production. He also is pushing for an agreement in Dubai that would end permitting for coal-fired power plants unless they are outfitted with expensive equipment to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, something he and his team know poor countries cannot afford. Not to worry, though. Xi’s China controls the supply chain for wind and solar power and for the raw materials that go into batteries for EVs and serve as backup electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. He’s also overseeing the construction of coal-fired power plants all over China.
And don’t count on China to contribute anything to the Loss and Damage Fund. The Chinese have better things to do with their money.