Rich Countries Fail To Pay Poor Ones For Climate Crisis

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For several years, it has been assumed that the wealthiest nations, particularly the largest global polluters, would help poor nations battle climate change. Fewer and fewer expert observers believe that is true.

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The Center for International Climate Law has expressed the most recent pessimism about the rich-to-poor model in a paper titled “UN Climate Talks in Bonn Fail to Put World on Path for Success at COP29.” The paper’s primary observation is that “Wealthy states that refuse to take responsibility and pay up the trillions needed to ensure that developing countries can adapt to the climate crisis, remedy the harm that it is causing, and enable a just transition to a safe climate future, blocked any progress.”

The observation should come as no surprise because of several reasons. The first of these is the massive dollar amount needed. The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago recently described the conclusion of one study. “Climate change through the middle of this century is likely to be far costlier than thought — to the tune of $38 trillion per year, a new study finds.” That is an estimate of the cost of failure. The price tag for success may even be more significant.

However, the wealthiest nations do not act in concert; there is no reason to believe that will change. The political agenda among the world’s largest countries appears to be working in the direction of little financial support for combating climate change at all–anywhere. The energy sector in most of these nations is still part of the fossil fuel industries

The rich aren’t going to send much money to the poor.