Unfair COP
by Austin Williams
When the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told the COP29 climate summit that oil and gas were “a gift from god”, he shattered the polite environmental pretensions that keep the global environmental merry-go-round turning.
The Conference of the Parties (COP) has been criss-crossing the world on a never-ending jamboree of virtue-signalling for the last three decades, advocating that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced through the of slashing carbon-intensive energy production. For example, the Glasgow summit two years ago (COP27) called for countries to develop policies that would lead “towards just transitions to net-zero emissions”. This global policy implies that underdeveloped countries should volunteer not to develop: they should agree not to use their fossil fuel reserves, and to agree not to industrialize along conventional heavy industry lines, In return, they are promised a financial contribution for the inconvenience.
Unlike the populations on the receiving end of these restrictive policies, the policy-formers have a hard time of it. After all, government delegates to COP have to endure sustainably sourced 5-course meals across two weeks of 5 star-hotel purgatory.
It is tough indeed being one of the 33,000 official delegates, whose numbers and expenses are inflated by a further 4,000 international journalists, and 16,000 NGO activists. Indeed, it has become such an arduous task that China, the USA and India, as well as several other lesser players refused to go this year. Fortunately, UK prime minister, Keir Starmer and his 470-strong entourage are made of sterner stuff. They got on their private airliners and took one for the team.
COP is the “supreme decision-making body” of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement—those Two Commandments of international climate change legislation. Its committees float around the world monitoring progress on emissions reductions targets. Every year there is a mix of self-flagellation—berating everyone’s failure to make sufficient progress—with enough self-congratulation to keep the show on the road. Next year, Belem, Brazil (a quick Google search reveals that “Belém is renowned for its gastronomy”).
This year, however, the host country Azerbaijan didn’t exactly play ball. Its oil and gas industry is what has made the country such a success story, with fossil fuels making up 90 percent of its exports. President Aliyev said, “Countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them. The people need them”.
This approach was unsurprisingly reinforced by Haitham Al Ghais, the secretary-general of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) who confirmed that: “As the world’s population grows, the economy expands, and human living conditions improve, the world will need more natural gas, not less”. Insisting that there shouldn’t be a scaling back of fossil fuels, he added that “COP 29 should facilitate financing for natural gas projects and scaling up cleaner technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage”.
This is not the way that things were meant to go at the world’s premier environmental soirée. Everyone is supposed to simply nod along with the ecological mantras. But this time, as a result of the Aliyev’s speech, the supposedly unimpeachable climate hype lies slightly more exposed than usual. And it took an authoritarian oligarch of a repressive state to call out environmentalism’s failings.
There is a populist appeal to Aliyev’s attack on environmentalism. He drew loud applause from delegates of a number of Pacific island nations when he condemned France for “colonialist crimes” in New Caledonia—this so appalled the French environment minister that she left the summit. It is unclear whether avoiding humiliation is more important than saving the planet.
This COP was dubbed “the Finance COP” because its main focus was on the payback owed to developing countries by industrialized nations: effectively an argument about handouts. While the West promised $100 billion in hush money in 2009 (and only managed to cough it up in 2022), the underdeveloped world is now demanding around $1.3 trillion. That’s the low estimate. Juan Carlos Gomez, Panama’s climate envoy, says that it should be $5 trillion (1% of global GDP), while the managing director of ARM Harith Infrastructure Fund, a Pan-African infrastructure fund based in Nigeria said that the cost of the global climate transition is more like $130 trillion. Whatever the figure, the developed world now has a problem of its own creation.
Poor countries are used to receiving charity in lieu of meaningful development opportunities, but the developed world has created debt repayment mechanisms that the underdeveloped world is finding difficult if not impossible to pay. For instance, the UK’s aid budget has declined from £15.3 billion in 2023 to £13.7 billion in 2024. this has appeased the domestic markets, but the government is now set to make Climate Finance payments of £3 billion every year until 2026.
Admittedly, what is given with one hand is often taken away with the other. The climate packages tend to require that in return for aid, the developing world remain undeveloped. Usually, the least developed countries, especially its leaders, accept this accounting charade with good grace, but it seems that rebellion is just around the corner.
There are several issues at stake:
1. A research paper in Nature (which is allegedly a trustworthy and impartial source of information even though it has taken a pro-environmental editorial line for some time), suggests that in order to meet strict Paris Accord targets and to keep warming to a maximum of 1.5oC, the proportion of reserves that must remain in the ground are as follows: 58% of oil, 56% of gas and 89% of coal. Many developing countries, particularly the least developed, but those with significant fossil fuel resources, stand to lose the most from this “asset stranding”. It clearly makes no sense to countries with huge stockpiles; like Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait and others. No wonder that they are keen to shift the rhetoric.
2. The UK might have decided to forsake the oil, gas and coal deposits that are still readily available underfoot at home—condemning the population to energy poverty, higher bills and the vicissitudes of natural energy production – but developing countries are less keen to withhold such opportunities from their citizens. Of course, if the fear of sanctions, or the withholding of aid by richer countries exceeds the expectation of economic benefits, then they may change their minds and take the money. However, a number of countries are forming closer allegiances with BRICS countries; those that are less squeamish about where they get their fuel. They are increasingly happy to sell their reserves regardless of threats, and to ignore the moral condemnation in the West.
3. While the UK can feel smug that it is the first country to reduce its emissions by 50 per cent (relative to 1990), the developing world has demanded that reparations be paid for the 250 years of emissions that the UK and other industrialized states have enjoyed in getting to their elevated position. This is a variant on the colonial reparations debate that has empowered some countries while ironically cementing their position as the victims of history, surviving only on the largesse of more powerful nations. As the developing world’s environmental advocates learn to use this cynical guilt trip on richer nations, they should have an ally in the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, who has repeatedly agreed with the demands for slavery reparations. It is but a short logical leap of imagination to agree to—or to be unable to argue against—demands for vast amounts of climate reparations, especially since Lammy has stated that climate change and the preservation of nature is “central to all the Foreign Office does”.
4. Payments to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to encourage them to adopt renewables, forego carbon-intensive industrialisation and remain under-developed for longer, have little appeal to the desperate populations of those countries. Reparations will undoubtedly find their way to the corporate and political entities of recipient nations, while keeping poor people poor.
5. Just as with the IMF before it, monitoring the ecological value of reparations payments will also legitimate governmental interference by richer nations in the internal business of poorer ones. The UK’s International Climate Finance payments, for instance, will be syphoned through British government departments like the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Civil service panjandrums will monitor the success or failure of less developed countries’ performance and approve or veto future payments. Reparations for colonial misdeeds miraculously become colonialism by another name.
The Western environmental movement regularly shows contempt for its own populations—labelling them parasites, vermin, cancers—for their profligacy and refusal to accept restraint. The logic of environmentalism is that consumption patterns must be driven down by lowering energy use and restraining mobility. Citizens are naturally recalcitrant towards such measures, and so come in for condemnation. If that is what Western governments think of their own populations it is not hard to imagine that this spite will be increasingly visited on the developing world populations.
Such is the West’s contempt for its own developmental project—casting the majority of its “working populations” as the problem for daring to want more development—that it is clear that the Western world is losing faith in its own authority, regardless of the fightback by developed nations. For example, Germany’s rapid de-industrialization, Britain’s degrowth mantra, France’s decarbonizing recession, Italy’s emissions reduction manufacturing contraction, etc, are all symptomatic of the corrosive social and economic implications of the climate change agenda.
Underdeveloped countries are clearly trying to turn the tables on—or take advantage of—the West’s environmental agenda, but they might soon find that they are tilting at windmills. Either way, the battle lines are being drawn.
++++++++
This article was first published in Cafe Americain – https://cafeamericainmag.com/a-populist-kick-back-at-the-cop29/
.
