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THE United Nations Climate Summit in Azerbaijan, which will run from November 11-22, is taking place in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election, and many key leaders won’t even show up. With low expectations set before it even begins, the summit will nonetheless see grandiose speeches on the need for a vast flow of money from rich countries to poorer countries. Unrealistic even before Trump’s victory, such calls for trillions of dollars are misguided and will almost certainly fail.

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The main problem is that rich countries – responsible for most of the emissions leading to climate change – want to reduce their emissions while poorer countries mainly want to eradicate poverty through growth that remains largely dependent on fossil fuels. To get poorer countries to act against their own interests, the West began offering cash twenty years ago.

In 2009Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State promised “new and additional” funds of US$100 billion (C$1,394,418,140) per year by 2020 if developing countries agreed to future carbon reductions. The rich world has failed to keep its promises and most funding has simply been repackaged and often mislabeled development aid.

Despite this fiasco, developing countries now want more money. In 2021 India declared that it alone would need $100 billion per year for its own transition. This year, China, India, Brazil and South Africa agreed Rich countries should increase their funding “from billions of US dollars per year to billions of US dollars”. All this was predicted in 2010, Ottmar Edenhofer, economist of the UN Group of Experts on Climate: “We must free ourselves from the illusion that international climate policy is an environmental policy. » Instead, “we are de facto distributing global wealth through climate policy.”

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But it’s hard to extract billions, let alone trillions, from a rich world that has its own problems. Cleverly, activists and many developing countries have rebranded the reason for these transfers as attributing the costs of climate damage to emissions from rich countries and demanding compensation for “loss and damage“.

In fact, this is an ill-considered assertion, as the damage caused by hurricanes, floods, droughts and other weather calamities has actually denied as a percentage of global GDP since 1990, both for rich and poor countries. Deaths due to these disasters have collapsed.

But this rebranding is a great way to increase demand. At last year’s climate jamboree, politicians agreed to create a ““loss and damage” fundwhich has just been put in place. The UN climate change body estimates that this will generate a flow towards the poorest countries in the region US$5.8-5.9 trillion by 2030. Others are even doing larger estimates such as $100 to $238 trillion by 2050. Some activists suggest the West should increase 2.5 trillion US dollars each year to start repairs.

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This will cost the West too much: this demand means a cost of $1,000 or more for every person in the rich world, every year for the foreseeable future. This is on top of the cost of rich global carbon reduction policies that will be even more expensive.

A recent American investigation shows that an overwhelming majority would reject such large transfers, and that majorities across the West would likely reach similar conclusions.

Additionally, the world’s poor face poverty, disease, malnutrition, and poor education, problems that could be alleviated at low cost. It is wrong and immoral to ignore these afflictions and spend trillions on climate projects. To top it off, the additional spending will likely reduce aid spending even further. Even if the money could be raised, it is highly unlikely that the trillions would go to the poor instead of pompous and vanity projects or bank accounts in Switzerland. Finally, transfers will not negate the fact that poorer countries must first lift themselves out of poverty by fostering development with enormous amounts of energy, much of which will still be fossil fuels.

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Given that today’s poorest countries will be responsible for the vast amount of emissions in the 21st century, the real challenge is hastening the day when they can transition to green energy. This goal is not achieved through huge reparations payments. Instead, governments should spend much less money on innovation, but much more efficiently. Spending tens of billions of dollars each year on low-carbon R&D to innovate and reduce the price of green energy below fossil fuels will lower the price of future green energy, ultimately making it rational to switch to all countries, and in particular for the poor of the world.

It is on such a sensible proposal that politicians should agree at the United Nations climate summit. Unfortunately, the global climate process has gone astray. This week the focus will instead be on the need for huge wealth transfers. This could never have happened, even before Donald Trump was elected – but it is now completely unrealistic.

Bjorn Lomborg is chair of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of “False alarm” And “Best Things First“.

National Post

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