Doha Conference: Rich countries to pay poor ones for climate damage

Using social justice and global warming, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conference in Doha has now drafted language that would have developed countries pay developing countries for damage done by climate change.

Climate scientists have been unable to prove the link between man-made CO2 emissions and changes in climate and have even lately been admitting that their data and models are flawed. But, developing countries have been seeking any way to get more aid from wealthier nations and climate change seems to be the best way to do that.

China is currently still listed as a developing nation which exempts it from carbon cutting targets and aid payments due to “climate damage.” The U.S. agreed to the idea that aid payments be based on climate damage, but had fought against “loss and damage” language or the use of new bureaucratic institutions to pass out the money.

The likely outcome is a slight increase in contributions from wealthy nations to the U.N. disaster and international aid funds. The agencies responsible for doling out those funds will now use “climate damage” to decide who gets how much money and CO2 output to decide who should pay the most.

Some believe that this new carbon tax scheme will push wealthier nations to reduce C02 emissions. As the bill for “climate damage” goes up wealthy nations will likely just decrease their U.N. aid to developing countries by an equal amount. Aid is aid after all.

Another concern is how “climate damage” will be determined. Is drought climate damage? Harsh winters? River flooding? Pretty much any catastrophic weather event will now be considered to see if it caused climate damage to a developing nation.

The climate hasn’t seen a statistically significant rise in global average temperatures in over a decade despite China’s huge increase in CO2 emissions. Basing an entire redistributive money scheme on the idea that no change to the status quo somehow produced more damage seems illogical – but, that assumes that you believe the goal to have anything at all to do with global climate.

The U.N. is social justice on a global scale. They constantly seek to move resources from those that create to those that demand. This latest agreement is nothing more than the furtherance of that mission.