Reparations won’t fix climate change
Opinion by Bjørn Lomborg • 7h
Wrong-headed demands that every single person in the rich world should pay $1000 a year in climate reparations will squeeze aid funding and do nothing to advance the green transition. The money would be better spent on R&D to drive down the cost of renewables, says Bjorn Lomborg
The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is happening in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election, and many key leaders won’t even show up. With low expectations set before it even began, the summit will nonetheless see grandiose speeches on the need for a vast flow of money from rich countries to poorer ones. Unrealistic even before Trump’s victory, such calls for trillions of dollars are misguided and sure to fail.
The main problem is that wealthy countries – responsible for most emissions leading to climate change – want to cut emissions while poorer countries mainly want to eradicate poverty through growth that remains largely reliant on fossil fuels. To get poorer countries to act against their own interest, the West started offering cash two decades ago.
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