Shakedown
At any U.N. conference, bad ideas are bound to surface, and the Copenhagen conference on climate change turned out to be no exception. Delegates from 135 mostly poorer nations proposed that the U.S. pay them hundreds of billions of dollars in “reparations” for all the years it generated greenhouse gases without hindrance.
Their spokesman, Sudanese diplomat Lumumba Di-Apling, giving the West credit for far more smarts than it has, accused the U.S. and other developed nations of hoarding resources in order to preserve economic dominance.
He said, rather opaquely, “One could say that ‘the empire’ has been doing that since the 16th century.” The East Coast of the United States wasn’t colonized until the 17th century and the U.S. didn’t become the United States for another century and a half. But why nitpick about historical accuracy when billions of dollars are at stake?
The U.S. envoy to the conference, Todd Stern, flatly rejected “the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like.”
What the developed nations are talking about is $10 billion a year for three years for the poorer nations to begin preparing for the consequences – assuming they materialize – of global warming.
Another proposal from the developing nations to which Stern gave short shrift is that the U.S. and other big nations should fund China’s shift to clean technologies. China is the world’s largest polluter and one of its fastest-growing economies; it shouldn’t have to be paid to do what’s right.
Moreover, as Stern pointed out, with $2 trillion in reserves China can afford it.
Given Americans’ deep reservations about the economic impact of curbing greenhouse gases, the developing nations’ preoccupation with reparations is unfortunate.
It seems less a serious approach to climate problems than an old-fashioned shakedown.
Scripps Howard News Service