John Feffer : Next year's big climate confab will be held in...Dubai. Wait, what? Whose idea was it to bring world leaders and environmentalists to a place....

 

FPIF's Director's letter  december 02,   2022 Dear Önder, Next year's big climate confab will be held in...Dubai. Wait, what? Whose idea was it to bring world leaders and environmentalists to a place with the fifth worst carbon footprint per capita in the world? Probably the same people who have brought this year's World Cup to Qatar, where the event organizers are using air conditioning to cool the seven outdoor stadiums. (Yes, you read that right: air-conditioning in outdoor venues.) But the worst is yet to come. In 2029, Saudi Arabia will host the Asian Winter Games. The idea of alpine skiers competing in one of the hottest countries in the world boggles the imagination. And people want to know why the international community can't agree to a more serious approach to global warming? You don't have to look much further than the massive oil and gas producers in the Persian Gulf and the horrendous economic inequality within those countries. But the United States, Russia, Australia, and Indonesia — all major fossil fuel producers and exporters — aren't far behind in terms of blocking progress on the climate front. This year's COP in Egypt did, however, produce one major landmark policy: a new fund to cover the loss and damage caused by climate change in the poorer nations of the world. This week at Foreign Policy In Focus, Tom Athanasiou explains that the fund, important in and of itself, also points to something equally significant. Going forward, the campaign to reduce carbon emissions has to take into account climate equity: the great disparity (historically and at the current moment) in carbon emissions by the rich versus the poor countries. In my World Beat column this week, I explore this topic through the lens of climate debt. Given the disparity in emissions, what do the richer countries owe to the poorer countries — in terms of transfers designed to help the latter leapfrog into a fossil-fuel-free future — and where will the money come from? Also this week at FPIF, Michael Klare looks at what the United States and China could be doing to advance these efforts, from a bilateral summit to a Sino-American Fund for Green Energy Transition. My colleague Manuel Perez-Rocha comes at this question from another angle, namely addressing investment treaties that have been favoring fossil fuel corporations. Elsewhere at FPIF, Stephen Shalom investigates the domestic situation in Ukraine. While supporting the government's fight for survival against the invading Russian army, he argues that Kyiv should also be protecting workers rights and freedom of the press at home. Columnist Walden Bello, meanwhile, reviews a new book that assesses the ideas, if you can call them that, animating the far right. And my colleague Omar Ocampo reports on the new Colombian government's policy toward neighboring Venezuela. John Feffer Director, FPIF