goldstein: annual un climate gabfest about getting our money, not saving the planet
for anyone mistakenly believing the latest united natio...
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for anyone mistakenly believing the latest united nations global gabfest on climate change in baku, azerbaijan was all about saving the planet, it was in fact all about money. this annual 11-day meeting, although it always goes into overtime — formally known as cop29 or the 29th conference of the parties to the un framework convention on climate change — was always about money, specifically about redistributing money from developed countries like canada to developing nations.
it’s also about hypocrisy, given the number of jet-setting politicians, bureaucrats, celebrities and billionaires who attend these annual orgies to excessive consumption, along with tens of thousands of delegates, creating an obscenely high carbon footprint.
the issue of money had to do with how much more cash taxpayers in developed nations like canada are going to pay to developing countries in climate reparations for allegedly ruining the planet by using our fossil fuel resources during the industrial revolution to power ourselves out of the third world into the first.
the total price tag to avert climate armageddon, we’re told by “experts,” is $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 from all government and private sources.
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the goal of cop29 was to come up with a new figure — called a new collective quantified goal — for the portion to be contributed by 22 designated “wealthy” countries, including canada, starting after 2025.
developed nations are currently paying $100 billion annually toward this goal, with prime minister justin trudeau doubling canada’s contribution to $5.3 billion over five years from 2021 to 2026, compared to the $2.65 billion he committed taxpayers to from 2015 to 2021.
the debate in azerbaijan — a wealthy, corrupt, petrostate bordering eastern europe and west asia, where most of the money ends up in the hands of the ruling family of its authoritarian president — was over how much money canada and the 21 other “rich” countries should be contributing to the fund post-2026.
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for that reason, the news coming out of cop29 resembled the bargaining that goes on in a mideast bazaar.
an initial offer of $250 billion annually by 2035 was angrily rejected by developing nations which would receive the funding, as an insult, prompting an offer of $300 billion in a bid to reach a deal.
dispute over the final number — 134 developing nations wanted it to be at least $500 billion annually and complained they had been frozen out of the negotiating process by wealthy countries — resulted in political temper tantrums and walk-outs over how much more money taxpayers in countries like canada should be conscripted into paying toward the un climate fund.
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the idea taxpayers in canada and many other developed countries are currently facing an affordability crisis with many families struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table held no sway in the corridors of cop29.
nor did the fact the tax-and-spend trudeau government has already mortgaged the financial future of the children of today’s taxpayers.
what cop29 underscored was that the debate over fighting climate change has never been about environmental policy, but about money.
the trudeau government, for example, has already committed $200 billion to the cause through 149 different government programs.
this includes the carbon tax, clean fuel, clean electricity and methane regulations, an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector, electric vehicle standards and massive subsidies to ev battery makers to establish a supply chain in canada.
early sunday morning local time, long after the official deadline had passed — which happens at every cop conference — participants agreed to the $300 billion figure, although delegates from india and kenya among others called it a betrayal, while delegates in favour of the deal applauded and hugged each other for the cameras as they always do at these annual dog and pony shows.
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negotiators said they also agreed to new rules for international carbon credit trading, although critics warned the rules are so weak they may well invite fraud.
in any event, the entire exercise at cop29 was a house of cards.
that’s because u.s. president-elect donald trump has said he will pull the u.s., the world’s second-largest emitter of industrial greenhouse gases after china and a major contributor to the green climate fund, out of the un’s paris climate agreement after he takes office, as he did the last time he was president from 2016 to 2020.
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