Copenhagen: UN Calls for Trillions in Reparations for “Climate Debt”
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
By William F. Jasper
The New American
The United Nations summit on global warming in Copenhagen is less than a week away, and UN agencies are trying to pre-set the dials with calls for massive funding of various UN projects and programs. Speaking at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, UN Development Program (UNDP) administrator Helen Clark said the developed nations need to provide between $75 billion and $100 billion a year to help poor nations cope with climate change.
"Developing countries are bearing the brunt of climate change now. It's not something that might happen in 10, 20, 30 years time," Clark told The Associated Press in a December 2 interview.
While $75 billion-$100 billion per year is nothing to sneeze at, it represents but a fraction of the "carbon debt" or "climate debt" that the United Nations, government representatives, environmental NGOs, leftist think tanks, and countries of the "South" say must be paid. Last year UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the global price tag could be $20 trillion
(yes, "trillion," with a "tr") over the next 20 years, which would mean somewhere around $1 trillion per year.
$45 Trillion for "Eco Debt"
However, even that pales next to the audacious call for $45 trillion made by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in its report issued this past March. Entitled, "Global Green New Deal," the UNEP report urges a "progressive and long-term global stimulus package — an unprecedented global green deal of jobs, capital and technology flows to catalyze sustainable growth and avoid dangerous climate change." According to UNEP, "It is estimated that such a package to address climate change and energy development needs at the global level may require US$45 trillion up to 2025."
The idea of idea of a "carbon debt," "climate debt," or "ecological debt" has been circulated in radical environmental circles since around the time of the 1992 UN "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. An organization called the Southern People's Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance informs us that:
Eco Debt means calling in the historical debt that the industrialized countries from the North have with the Third World arising from the former's plunder, destruction and devastation of the latter countries during their invasion, conquest and subsequent colonization.
Other "climate justice" NGOs, alliances, and blogs have been springing up (see Jubilee Debt Campaign, Bolivia Rising, ActionAid, and Mobilization for Climate Justice).
However, it is thanks to the New York Times and the usual Big Media suspects that this notion has been "mainstreamed." The Times' syndicated columnist and best-selling author Naomi Klein has become one of the most avid promoters of the "climate debt" scheme. In a November 11, 2009 column entitled "Climate Rage," Klein writes:
As faith in government action dwindles, however, climate activists are treating Copenhagen as an opportunity of a different kind. On track to be the largest environmental gathering in history, the summit represents a chance to seize the political terrain.... Among the smartest and most promising — not to mention controversial — proposals is "climate debt," the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis.
Klein is outraged that the impenitent people of the developed countries are not rushing forward to shower hundreds of billions of dollars on the governments of developing countries in atonement for centuries of the sin of carbon gluttony. She scolds: "Never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life — yet we keep doing it."
Some might brush this off as simply the inconsequential ranting of another radical elite opinionator. But, unbeknownst to almost all Americans is the fact that "climate debt" is a prominent feature in the text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that will be the centerpiece of the Copenhagen summit.
The official treaty text is copiously salted with terms such as "historical climate debt," "ecological debt," "adaptation debt," "emissions debt," "equitable burden sharing," and "a more equitable utilization of the global atmospheric resources." These and similar terms are examples of the code used in internationalist circles to propose the most massive redistribution of global wealth in human history. However, this very important side of the treaty has received scant attention in the major media, where global-warming alarmists prefer to focus on horror stories of alleged impending apocalypse.
Understandably, those promoting the UN's global-governance program at Copenhagen are not in a hurry to inform the American public about this aspect of the "climate change" agenda; if those who are expected to pay the bill got the slightest inkling of the enormity of the price tag that is about to be presented to them, the revolt would be unstoppable.
William F. Jasper joined the staff of The John Birch Society in 1976 as a researcher and soon became a contributing editor to the Society’s magazines, American Opinion and The Review of the News. When those publications merged in 1985 to become THE NEW AMERICAN, Mr. Jasper continued to serve as a writer and contributing editor until 1990, when he was promoted to the position of Senior Editor.
Over the past three decades, William Jasper has researched and written extensively on foreign and domestic politics, national security, education, immigration, constitutional issues, the culture war, and most notably, the United Nations. His renown as an investigative journalist and insightful analyst on a wide array of topics has made William Jasper a frequent and highly sought guest on many radio and television programs.
He is the author of the 2001 book, The United Nations Exposed and the 1992 book, Global Tyranny-Step by Step: The United Nations and the Emerging New World Order. Both books were praised by many as the most authoritative and detailed expose' of the UN ever written. Mr. Jasper’s coverage of UN events has included attendance at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the UN 50th Anniversary Founding celebration in San Francisco, the July 1998 UN Summit on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and the UN Millennium Summit in New York City during September 2000.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, William Jasper grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is a graduate of the University of Idaho. Mr. Jasper receives critical support from his wife Carmen and their two sons.
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