{"id":290533,"date":"2023-12-08T20:09:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T19:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=290533"},"modified":"2023-12-08T20:09:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T19:09:03","slug":"undercurrent-at-the-un-climate-summit-green-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=290533","title":{"rendered":"Undercurrent at the UN Climate Summit \u2013 Green Colonialism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Peter Murphy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubai, United Arab Emirates<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reducing carbon emissions is the theme at the UN Climate Summit this week, so it\u2019s D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again from past summits, as baseball Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra famously said. But the underlying, more sinister theme to reduce emissions worldwide is tantamount to modern-day colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made this colonialism point today during a Q&A session at a panel entitled Democratizing Access to Climate Information<\/em> held in the conference \u201cGreen Zone.\u201d Specifically, I said why deny the ability of developing nations to prosper economically using abundant fossil fuel resources? The example of this prosperity was the very location of COP28, the United Arab Emirates, fueled by an oil and gas economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response to my concerns by Alice Aedy, co-founder and CEO of Earthrise Studio, was all too glibly familiar: \u201cdeveloping countries absolutely should be aided in this [energy] transition and that\u2019s where \u2018just transition\u2019 comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I reported<\/a> earlier this week, forcing developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America to \u201cleapfrog\u201d renewable energy by limiting access to fossil fuels ultimately comes back to impeding their ability to prosper economically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of 2020, the UAE\u2019s per capital income was more than $35,500, according to the\u00a0World Bank<\/a>, which it places the nation in the top 20, and exceeds Canada and the average among the nations of the European Union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
CFACT president Craig Rucker speaking to Mariam al-Mheiri, Minister of Climate Change and Environment for the United Arab Emirates, today at the UN Climate Summit.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>In numerous countries that comprise the developing world, per capita income levels are less than one-tenth of UAE\u2019s income, from Rwanda ($638) to Cambodia ($1,346) to El Salvador ($3,128). Wind turbines and solar panels will not put these nations anywhere near the level of UAE, or even the lower-income European nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new colonialism to push climate change conformity the developing countries is all too evident in the world envisioned by COP28. The Financial Times<\/em> just reported that there is a \u201clooming land grab\u201d in Africa by Western corporations to purchase land in Liberia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia for \u201ccarbon credits,\u201d which is a colossal ruse. \u201cThe [methods] of exploitation might be new but the consequences are not so different to the last 200 years of land grabs in Liberia,\u201d the Times<\/em> wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When land throughout Africa is locked up for \u201ccarbon credits,\u201d for outside interests, this land becomes off-limits for \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 fossil fuel extraction to improve the nation\u2019s economy and living standards, as it did for western nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week The Federalist<\/em> reminded us that economic growth in the developing world was a deep concern for Barack Obama when he was president, not<\/em> because there wasn\u2019t enough, but that there could be too much: \u201cIf everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over \u2013 unless we find new ways of producing energy,\u201d then-President Obama said<\/a> in 2013 during a trip to South Africa. This from a man who now owns three<\/em> mansions<\/em> and is purported to despise Britain and other European nations for their colonial past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us back to the issue at hand \u2013 money<\/em>. It is always about the money and it is going to take lots of it that does not exist, from Western nations primarily, to somehow finance an alternative energy experiments and projects throughout the world to usher the \u201cjust transition\u201d mentioned above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on this lack of realism and financial unwillingness, I sensed today a subtle panic from the UN climate hierarchy in the person UN Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, who spoke<\/a> to the media about what he portrays as the urgency at hand. \u201cWe\u201d \u2014 meaning rich Western nations \u2014 need \u201cto deliver our promise to fund climate action across the world\u2026good intentions won\u2019t halve emissions this decade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went onto to say that negotiating written agreements is \u201ca grab bag of wish lists and heavy on posturing\u201d and that \u201cwe need COP to deliver a bullet train to speed up climate action. We currently have an old caboose chugging over rickety tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A reminder, this is the 28th<\/sup> UN climate summit, and its efforts effectively amount to, as described by Secretary Stiell, \u201can old caboose chugging over rickety tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knows the money isn\u2019t there globally for \u201ctransitioning\u201d to alternative energies on any mass scale anytime soon, so he sounded the alarm today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expect climate colonialism to continue under the fiction of existential climate change and carbon emissions until enough countries break free and act in the economic interests of their own populations. Meanwhile, climate will go on changing, as it always has, in directions uncertain, regardless of how many UN officials hit the panic button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post\u00a0Undercurrent at the UN Climate Summit \u2013 Green Colonialism<\/a>\u00a0appeared first on\u00a0CFACT<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reducing carbon emissions is the theme at the UN Climate Summit this week, so it\u2019s D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again from past summits, as baseball Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra famously said. But the underlying, more sinister theme to reduce emissions worldwide is tantamount to modern-day colonialism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":290537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Reducing carbon emissions is the theme at the UN Climate Summit this week, so it\u2019s D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again from past summits, as baseball Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra famously said. 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This is eco- socialism propaganda. From Watts Up With That? Note: This editorial was originally in the queue to be published in a prominent newspaper, but the editor somehow forgot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"climate activists\"","block_context":{"text":"climate activists","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-activists"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/00ad_213954899.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/00ad_213954899.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/00ad_213954899.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/00ad_213954899.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/00ad_213954899.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290533"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290542,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290533\/revisions\/290542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/290537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}