A call for a host of taxes on the U.S. and European nations designed to transfer wealth to economies confronting “the cost of drought, floods and superstorms made worse by rising temperatures” was renewed Wednesday at a U.N. climate conference in Germany.
If heeded, the so-called “loss and damage” demand will see prosperous, successful countries on the hook for billions of dollars for decades or even centuries to come.
The BBC reports poorer countries claim a promise they would be compensated for the damage done by richer countries’ emissions would be honoured this year. They now doubt new money to pay for the “impacts of climate change” they can’t adapt to would be set up.
Developing country participants say climate impacts on their countries are more severe than on the richer nations and they therefore should be at the end of significant funding transfers as per previous calls.
A group of faith leaders have sought to guilt rich nations into redistributing their wealth under the guise of climate change reparations. https://t.co/B531od6kuG
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“We are already living with loss and damages for the last 25 years,” said Adriana Vasquez Rodriquez from the Association La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican environmental group.
“We have families who have lost their houses, their crops, their lives, and no-one is paying for that, we are running out of resources, and at the same time, we are depending on debt.”
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is one who has previously implied the West owes a “historical debt” to countries in the Global South to drastically reduce carbon emissions due to the legacy of colonialism.
According to the BBC report, developing nations argue climate change they are experiencing has been caused by historic carbon emissions that originated in richer countries.
They say Europe and the U.S. have a responsibility now to pay for these losses and damages.
This is not the first time a demand for reparations from successful economies has been made or for special concessions to be granted to “climate refugees.”
As Breitbart News reported, officials at the United Nations COP25 climate change conference in Madrid back in 2019 heard the same plea.
Green groups claimed then the “increased pace and intensity of climate disasters,” means funding needs boosting to keep track.
HERE IT COMES: Democrats have drafted a bill to import at least 50,000 "climate refugees" per year despite the damaging impact on Americans' wages and rents. https://t.co/HMavR6RTaZ
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 29, 2019
At the current conference in Bonn, Germany, climate campaigners went much further than the diplomats after having flown in from 200 countries around the world to state their case.
“Vulnerable nations are being betrayed by rich countries. The E.U., U.S., others have been blocking progress on loss and damage finance,” tweeted Tasneem Essop from CAN International.
“We are extremely disappointed at what’s happening at the negotiations at Bonn.”
The amount demanded by activists for loss and damage inflicted by prosperous nations would top $300 billion annually by 2030.
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