As China continues to emit far more CO2 than all other countries and is building about a coal plant a week, Climate Envoy John Kerry is offering up taxpayer dollars for so-called climate reparations.
But only if China agrees to pay up as well. From Politico [emphasis, links added]:
The U.S. is suddenly open to making rich nations pay reparations to countries suffering the ravages of climate change — but only if China ponies up, too.
The about-face comes after years of Washington serving as the bulwark of wealthy countries’ resistance to making such payments, and would set up China as the new climate bogeyman. It would also challenge Beijing’s assertion that China should still be seen as a developing nation.
Paying developing nations that suffer from climate-driven disasters and rising temperatures is one of the most contentious issues in global climate negotiations, which resume this weekend at a major conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
China should contribute its own funds to the cause, U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry told reporters late last month, “especially if they think they’re going to continue to go on to the next 30 years with increasing their emissions.”
But China told COP27 attendees they’d be happy to pony up some money to developing countries that suffered bad weather, an offering that many are calling a slick negotiation, as China (and the UN) still consider the manufacturing behemoth a…developing country. From The Independent [emphasis, links added]:
China’s representative at the UN’s Cop27 summit in Egypt has opened the door for a new financial mechanism which could mean the country contributes to climate loss and damage compensation for poorer countries.
The country’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said on Wednesday stressed his solidarity with those calling for more action from wealthy nations on the issue, and also spoke about the impacts China had suffered from climate-linked weather extremes. The country has seen record droughts over the summer, but has also had extreme flooding earlier in the year.
Outside the conference centre on Wednesday morning, protesters are also demanding climate compensation and an end to fossil fuel use as negotiations on how to tackle the climate crisis get underway on the summit’s Finance Day.
It comes after the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, who is also the chair for Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), on Tuesday called for all major emitters to agree to pay for ‘loss and damage’ in the negotiations.
“We all know that India and China … are major polluters and the polluters must pay,” PM Gaston Browne said. “I don’t think that there’s any free pass for any country.”
You almost get the impression that all this slobbering over money has nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with redistributing the world’s wealth–as the UN sees fit.
What better way than to link every bad weather event to a phony ‘climate crisis’ despite those same events occurring at the same frequency and intensity since time began.
So the World’s leaders still do not know the difference between Climate and Weather!