The Conference of the Parties(COP)29 ended in anger as the developing nations rejected an agreement by the wealthy nations that would have given the greedy little grifters $300 billion in funding for projects to combat climate change.
It's a "disaster," some of the representatives claimed. The $300 billion in aid would come "from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources."
Nigeria branded the deal "a joke." Ralph Regenvanu, envoy for the island nation of Vanuatu, stated: "The dollar amounts pledged and the emissions reductions promised are not enough. They were never going to be enough. And even then, based on our experience with such pledges in the past, we know they will not be fulfilled."
Regenvanu has figured it out. The industrial West is not going to give a blank check to third-world kleptocrats without strings attached.
That's exactly what the developing nations and their NGO lobbyists wanted. They're angry because their demands for yearly $1.3 trillion in no-strings-attached grants were rejected.
That's $11 trillion over the next decade. And we're not supposed to ask what they're going to use it for.
I can't for the life of me figure out why rich countries would reject such a sweet deal.
The bitter denunciations from developing countries point to the impossibility of their "demands."
“We are disappointed with the outcome, which clearly brings out the unwillingness of developed-country parties to live up to their responsibilities." India’s Chandni Raina added, “India does not accept the goal proposal in its present form.… The goal is too little, it is too distant. It is 2035, too far gone.”
India has the third-largest carbon footprint of any nation on Earth. They are the fifth richest country by GDP. What are they showing up at COP29 with their hand out for?
India is acting as if it's still a developing country. They can get away with it because the definition of "developing country" hasn't changed since 1992 when the first COP was held.
Higher-income countries in the developing bloc rebuffed demands from Western countries to commit to providing climate funds to poorer countries. That would have blurred the categories of developed and developing set out in the first United Nations climate treaty of 1992, a divide that Western nations say no longer makes sense. That treaty and the Paris agreement say that only developed countries are required to provide climate finance.
In theory, higher-income developing countries are entitled to receive such funds under the U.N. climate treaties, but in practice the countries have increasingly been investing in green-energy projects in other developing countries. China has provided some $25 billion in climate financing to poorer countries since 2016, Chinese officials said.
China is the world's largest producer of CO2, emitting a third of the world's total carbon output. They've been trying to buy the goodwill of poorer countries by investing in climate mitigation projects around the world. Twenty-five billion dollars in eight years is a pittance, but it has opened markets for the Chinese and advanced their goal of becoming the world's number one power.
The election of Donald Trump has thrown the entire climate change industry into chaos.
“I’m not sure we will have a better situation next year because of the geopolitical situation,” said Ana Toni, the climate negotiator for Brazil. Brazil will host COP30 next year.
Trump is right to reject the entreaties of these grifters. The Climate Action Network (CAN), which represents more than 1,900 organizations in 130 countries — all in line to receive a healthy slice of that funding — is beside themselves.
CAN executive director Tasneem Essop could barely hold back the tears.
“This has been the most horrendous climate negotiations in years due to the bad faith of developed countries. This was meant to be the finance COP, but the Global North turned up with a plan to betray the Global South."
Other NGOs were equally bitter.
Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa, said that the COP was "a disaster for the developing world. Rich countries have promised to 'mobilise' some funds in the future, rather than provide them now. The cheque is in the mail. But lives and livelihoods in vulnerable countries are being lost now."
"The supposed ‘COP of climate finance’ has turned into the ‘COP of false solutions’," added Kirtana Chandrasekaran of Friends of the Earth International. "The terrible deal on finance destroys the notion of historical responsibility of the rich big polluting countries and pushes private debt creating finance."
The guilt trip the developing countries and NGOs are trying to lay on the U.S. is mind-boggling. Many of those nations have benefitted hugely from U.S. aid. In short, the developing world would be a lot worse off without the U.S. sending money, expertise, and loans to bring these nations into the 20th century, much less the 21st.
The outright grifting has to end.
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