Opinion by Mathew Carr
Dec. 11-12, 2023 — DUBAI — I like to look at geopolitics through the lens of a massive climate negotiation.
It’s one of the most logical ways to see things as they actually are — rather than how the corrupt mainstream media want them to appear.
Israel’s brutal killing in Gaza is partly about getting massive Gazan gas reserves. In 2014, when Russia seized Crimea, it acquired “not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars,” according to this article. That Ukraine land grab became even more deadly in 2022, as we all know too well.
These land grabs are climate grabs too.
Climate protection requires land for forests, green agriculture (and new sources of oil and gas, apparently — because of the net-zero science.)
The Paris deal effectively sets a global carbon budget because of its 1.5C temperature goal.
The brutality has even crept into language used at the COP28 talks by climate envoys, which are meant to end Tuesday, but probably won’t.
Simon Stiell, UNFCCC executive secretary, Monday: “So that leaves us with the question: how do we get, from here, a meaningful deal? First – clear the unnecessary tactical blockades out of the way. And there have been many along this journey. The Global Stocktake needs to help all countries get out of this mess. Any strategic landmines that blow it up for one, blow it up for all.“
John Kerry, US envoy, Dec. 5: “I find myself getting more and more militant because I do not understand how adults in positions of responsibility can be avoiding responsibility for taking away those things that are killing people on a daily basis.” [CarrZee: Actually he is not getting more militant at all, he seems to be getting more and more desperate for money and wants to shut down coal around the world so the US can sell more of its natural gas to replace it — and this brutal profiteering is angering UN negotiators frustrated with America’s unwillingness to collaborate properly on climate protection. His farting is obviously beside the point, but still funny.]
Later Tuesday, Brazil signalled it wasn’t taking the carbon budget fight laying down.
First-hand suffering
I’ve suffered the militaristic behavior first hand after whistleblowing for about 10 years about Bloomberg LP’s climate-news coverage that’s biased against an urgent energy transition. I was effectively fired immediately after using the company’s whistleblowing hotline, but that didn’t stop executives at New York based Bloomberg from misleading the UK employment courts about it. I now reckon Bloomberg is part of America’s sophisticated propaganda machine.
A global carbon budget study published earlier this month estimates the remaining carbon budget before the 1.5°C target is breached consistently over multiple years, not just for a single year — and it’s not pretty.
Global carbon budget runs out in 2030
“At the current emissions level, the Global Carbon Budget team estimates a 50% chance global warming will exceed 1.5°C consistently in about seven years [So that is in about the year 2030]. This estimate is subject to large uncertainties, primarily due to the uncertainty on the additional warming coming from non-CO2 agents, especially for the 1.5°C targets which is getting close to the current warming level. However, it’s clear that the remaining carbon budget – and therefore the time left to meet the 1.5°C target and avoid the worse impacts of climate change – is running out fast.“
The carbon-budget grab is almost as violent as the warmongering land grabs. Do you seriously think it’s a coincidence that the US – the biggest emitter historically with only 4% of the world population – is behind both the Ukraine and Israel wars? It’s not.
The US appears to be trying to get control of (or influence over) an even more unfair portion of that fast-depleting carbon budget. Especially, it does not want Russia to get control of it.
The US market for LNG is already one of the biggest beneficiaries of the attempted isolation of Russia. That attempt has failed and arguably strengthened the Bric+ countries.
This violent game (many other countries are at it too, of course) — where the more aggressive you are, the more leverage you have in the COP28 climate negotiation — has got to stop.
Here’s how the US and its chief supplier of goods China appear to be trying to grab an unfair share of that remaining budget.
The US target for 2030 is for a single year, so it can emit what it likes from 2023 to 2029. That the US does not have a multi-year target is outrageous. It’s now apparently switching focus to 2035 without dealing properly with 2023-2030.
Paris says each nation’s contribution should reflect its “highest possible ambition.” This by the US is clearly not that and is a shocking disregard to the Paris climate deal’s 1.5C target.
China, too, seems to be waiting until 2025 to tighten its 2030 target, but it should be doing so now, given the urgency and jump in global temperatures.
The world’s people, not the wealthy that mostly created the climate crisis, suffer in several ways, not just because of a broken climate.
Further, they are missing out on the carbon money that should go their way if polluters paid properly.
Nations need to be discussing how to stop proliferating fossil fuels before then begin talking about phasing them out.
No one is talking about that much, in public at least. Who specifically has to stop first? Who gets to produce the lower-levels of fossil fuels allowed once net zero is reached around 2050, if that even happens?
Short termism
I contend a long-term approach is needed in order to get any climate deal that works short term. Lack of long-term thinking has hampered the striking of a deal that works, so far, at least.
“No, it is not about that (long-term thinking),” said one executive from a fossil-fuel company, Monday. “The EU is 18-20% of the world economy [CarrZee: it has fallen to 15% on some measures in 2022]. Three decades from now it could in the single digit. Where is Nigeria or India, Indonesia going to be? Too many unknowns, too many assumptions. We have much more important priorities towards the next few years that will impact greatly where we are going to be in 2050. Economies with the opportunity to leapfrog (without legacies [such as massive fossil fuel networks]) in many ways can change faster. See Estonia and many former COMECON countries with a better cellphone systems than the US in the first decade of the new century.” NOTE: Comecon was the organization established in January 1949 to facilitate and coordinate the economic development of the eastern European countries belonging to the Soviet bloc (Wikipedia).
This attitude reflects a focus on the short term and on money rather than sustainability.
And finally, there’s a further grab going on.
The people are also suffering because the wealthy are not being taxed properly. The same rich folks who are responsible for the climate crisis are the same ones mostly benefiting from the warmongering military-industrial-intelligence complex.
Indeed, there is still a shadow race to be the place, the country, that shields the wealthy and the corporations which are willing to shift their money around to find a location with the least tax “friction”.
Countries were meant to have imposed a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, but many haven’t.
I asked Google’s Bard AI software: How many countries charge the required minimum corporate tax rate of 15%?
It said:
As of October 26, 2023, 136 countries have agreed to implement the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework’s minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. This means that these countries are committed to adopting legislation or regulations that will ensure their corporate tax systems comply with this new standard.
However, it’s important to note that implementation timelines vary across countries. Some countries have already implemented the necessary changes, while others are still in the process of doing so.
UAE, host of COP28, appears to be among the laggards, with a rate of 9% for some, but a long list of exemptions:
Source: PWC
9% is not the ‘required’ 15%
(More to come; tweaks headline to say budget instead of market [which is more clear even though many people still don’t appear to understand what a carbon budget is] updates with brutal language at COP28, clarifies GDP measure; updated with comments; earlier with CleanPowerDave, tax snips)
NOTES
Whitehouse statement from Dec. 2:
Colombia president:
The president of Colombia attended the Climate Summit held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In addition to making a parallel between the situation in Gaza and climate change, he ended up talking about Hitler
[…] The crazy, reckless, brutal race at COP28 to grab an even more unjust portion of the remaining carbo… […]
[…] The crazy, reckless, brutal race at COP28 to grab an even more unjust portion of the remaining carbo… […]