Denmark First to Pay into the UN Local weather Change Loss and Injury Fund – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

$13 million down, simply one other $99.987 billion to go…

Denmark turns into first U.N. member to pay for ‘loss and injury’ from local weather change

By Sarah Kaplan
September 20, 2022 at 6:23 p.m. EDT

Denmark will direct about $13 million to help susceptible international locations which have suffered “loss and injury” from local weather change — the primary time in U.N. historical past a rich member state has pledged compensation for the implications of emissions within the creating world.

The landmark announcement got here Tuesday as diplomats and world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations Common Meeting. Earlier within the day, U.N. Secretary Common António Guterres known as on nations to tax fossil gasoline firms and use the income to assist folks fighting local weather change’s irreversible harms.

In a assertion, Danish growth minister Flemming Møller Mortensen mentioned {that a} go to to flood-stricken areas of Bangladesh this spring helped encourage the pledge.

“It’s grossly unfair that the world’s poorest ought to endure essentially the most from the implications of local weather change, to which they’ve contributed the least,” Mortensen mentioned.

…

Learn extra: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/20/denmark-climate-change-un-general-assembly/

What can I say – the quantity, $13 million, is a ridiculous token gesture, a mockery, if Denmark really believes they’re partly answerable for untold local weather injury in poor international locations.

However, the one manner for that cash to be meaningfully spent is on the acquisition of products created through the identical fossil gasoline evil the compensation is meant to deal with.

Fossil gasoline and modernity has achieved immeasurable good to even the poorest folks – even individuals who reside in mud huts personal transportable radios, TVs and metallic instruments, and at the least a sliver of entry to fashionable medication by charity outreach organisations. Lifespans have improved worldwide, besides probably in horror present regimes like North Korea and Venezuela – all due to fossil gasoline goodness.

Actually a theatre of the absurd – however activists will use this token gesture to attempt to disgrace the USA into paying billions.