The United Nations (UN) is demanding that wealthy countries around the world pay poor nations $2 trillion per year in “reparations” for “climate justice.”
The UN wants the annual transfer of funds to start at $2T by 2030 and then continue rising each year thereafter.
A UN-backed report published on Tuesday argues that the money is needed for climate “justice.”
However, China has been specifically excluded from the demand for reparations, despite being the largest polluting nation in the world by a long way.
The Communist state’s greenhouse gas emissions now exceed the entire rest of the developed world combined.
The proposal for “climate reparations” includes taxes for fossil fuel companies on their global “carbon profits.”
The first one trillion dollars alone should come from rich countries, investors, and multilateral development banks, declared the analysis commissioned by Britain and Egypt, hosts respectively of the 2021 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow and this week’s COP27 event in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
A further $1.4 trillion must then originate domestically from private and public sources, the report, seen by AFP, insists
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has already signaled it is open to discussing climate “reparations” as he prepares tax hikes and public service cuts at home in the name of fiscal responsibility.
The new 100-page analysis, Finance for Climate Action, is presented as an investment blueprint to deliver the Paris climate treaty goals of capping the rise in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, and at 1.5C if possible.
“Rich countries should recognize that it is in their vital self-interest — as well as a matter of justice given the severe impacts caused by their high levels of current and past emissions — to invest in climate action in emerging market and developing countries,” said economist Nicholas Stern, one of the report’s leads.
Stern also authored a landmark report on the economics of climate change.
It calls for grants and low-interest loans from the governments of developed countries to double from about $30 billion annually today to $60 billion by 2025, AFP reports.
“These sources of finance are critical for emerging markets and developing countries to support action on restoring land and nature, and for protecting against and responding to the loss and damage due to climate change impacts,” the authors said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has already lamented the world is in peril as never before.
He told COP27 delegates the latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos.
“We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action — ambitious, credible climate action,” the UN chief declared.
“Emerging market” countries include large economies in the global south that have seen rapid growth — coupled with rising greenhouse gas emissions — in recent decades, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Historically seen as part of this group, China was excluded from the new estimates even as it remains one of the world’s single greatest polluters and users of coal-generated power.
The COP27 climate conference opened Sunday.
The green agenda event has seen around 40,000 attendees being flown into a seaside resort in Egypt from around the world.
