US refuses climate reparations for developing nations
US refuses climate reparations for developing nations
Climate envoy John Kerry made the remarks before he travels to China to discuss climate change issues.
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Another post about this where people didn't read the article, but jump to anti-American conclusions. This story is about American politicians arguing semantics. The article says that America does contribute to a fund that was agreed upon by many countries in a summit in Egypt. Whether that is fair is debatable, but America is paying in to it.
Every country is refusing to use the term "reparations" because it implies legal guilt, and no country wants to get "sued" by the world.
Again, this is a pointless argument about semantics, and what term to use.
Thing is that there is legal guilt associated with US colonialism. The atrocities US commits against other countries are well documented, and US backed institutions such as the IMF are directly responsible for perpetuating the economic relations that have created the climate crisis. Acknowledging the role US has played in creating the crisis and holding US accountable is far from pointless.
"Reparations" not only imply guilt, but also justice and fairness. Contributing to a fund that doesn't cover even a fraction of the damage caused by the US is not nearly good enough and proves that the US should be forced to pay reparations.
You realize that paying C02 emissions based on capita for a country makes no sense. If you believe a country should be paying than it pays per country impact. So that would stipulate that China needs to be paying twice what the U.S. does.... which I somehow imagine you aren't going to agree with.
You have to account for outsourcing of industry when considering emissions. If the emissions are coming from China, but they're coming from a US-based company that's making products for people in the US, then you can't really blame China for those emissions. It's certainly not a simple matter, but let's not pretend like this is some impossible thing to measure.
China must pay its fair share to help save the world, but determining "fair share" is more complicated than just determining how much carbon came from within the borders of the country.
Measure by emissions within your country. If China allows a company to operate within their borders they are responsible for said fees. Pass the fees to those companis if you wish, but they are their lands. The companies will move elsewhere if the fees are to high or find alternative ways to do business producing less emissions. It really isn't tough to figure out.
China has only been allowed to grow as much as it has because it has played nice with American capitalism, so can you even imagine the global economic and geopolitical melt down that would cause? If China started forcing all polluting industries to either clean up or get out of their country it would cause the greatest economic depression in history, start a new Cold War, and probably lead to World War 3.
More likely it would just get negotiated that costs needed to be less per emissions and then they had x years to make efforts to prove they are mitigating as much as possible. And the same old shit would carry on as it is right now.
(Not saying this is what I want, just that this is how it seems)
What on Earth does "costs needed to be less per emissions" mean?
Same bullshit as always. No one will end up paying an amount that will "re-pay" sufficiently. Instead it just goes back to hoping tech advancments move us to cleaner energy quickly.
(Aka. If they were going to pay x per footprint, they instead would pay x/y)
That fund's goal doesn't even cover $1B per country and is done voluntarily from good will and even private institutions. From the other article you can see that the fund is basically just an investment gig for loans rather than donations out their well intentioned hearts. The USA has to pay compensation for Operation Condor at the very least, and that should not be something they can just opt out of. And that should only be the start if they want to get treated like allies and equals.
We're going to need a JDPON to get America to pay its tens of trillions of dollars reparations debt, huh?