I’ve not left for Dubai yet, but evidently they decided to start without me. Today was the official first day of COP28. It began with the president of the proceedings, Sultan Al Jabar, giving a speech in which he said, “Let history reflect the fact that this is the Presidency that made a bold choice to proactively engage with oil and gas companies. We had many discussions.”
It’s hard to believe that he said that with a straight face. I wrote a few days ago about the greenwashing charges that have been brought against Al Jabar, since he is not only the president of COP28, but also president of the national oil company of the UAE. The day after I wrote that, the news broke that documents had been found showing that Al Jabar was intending to use the COP to hobnob with a bunch of other companies on the side to make new oil deals that will increase the amount of oil his company will produce over coming years. That hardly seems like the sort of thing the president of a climate advocacy conference should do.
But from the other side of his mouth, he advocated strongly for the Loss and Damage fund. At last year’s COP27 in Egypt it was decided that the wealthier countries who have caused the most environmental damage should contribute to a fund for the poorer countries who will suffer most from climate change. That decision, however, did not actually include any contributions. So Al Jabar put his money where that side of his mouth is, and pledged $100 million from the United Arab Emirates.
Other countries followed suit. Germany also put up a little over $100 million, and the UK pledged $50 million. How about the United States, the largest economy on Earth and the greatest emitter of greenhouse gasses over the last century? We managed to come up with only $17.5 million. That’s pretty pathetic. There is that much money under the sofa cushions in our budget.
Or think of it this way: if we would put a one cent per gallon tax on gasoline, it would take us less than 5 days to come up with $17.5 million (in 2022, our country went through 370 million gallons of gas per day - source). I’m a little nervous to show my American face over there next week.
All told, the countries of the COP drummed up about $400 million for the Loss & Damage fund. That sounds like a lot of money to you and me, but how far will it go in paying for the damages that will result from climate change? It is uncontroversial that a warmer planet will produce more natural disasters. Like the cyclone in 2020 that hit Bangledesh and India, resulting more than $13 billion dollars in damage. Or how do you even calculate the loss and damage that resulted from more than 1 million people displaced in Nigeria last year due to unprecedented flooding? Or the more than 20 million people starving in Somalia because the climate has already changed there.
However you calculate that loss, the $400 million is going to go very far. By 2030 (just six years from now!) loss and damage costs for developing countries is projected to be $400 billion per year! So we need the amount pledged times a thousand, every year!
My one cent gas tax would produce $1.35 billion dollars for a year, but that still sounds like just a drop in the gas tank. A ten cent per gallon gas makes that $13.5 billion. Do I hear a dollar per gallon?
I know doing something like that causes all sorts of other economic problems. But let’s not kid ourselves that ignoring the plight of other nations won’t come back to bite us. If we can’t appeal to justice to do the right thing, perhaps other considerations will help: can you imagine the refugee crisis that is coming when food won’t grow any more in countries close to the equator? I don’t think we can build walls high enough (and I hope we won’t try) to keep that many desperate people out.
The only solution I see that will conserve the important parts of our way of life (I’ll own to being a conservative in that sense!), is for us to phase out fossil fuels. I’ll explain that in a future post.