Carbon markets are 'bogus solutions' as rich world keeps polluting, African Climate Summit is told
Carbon markets are 'bogus solutions' as rich world keeps polluting, African Climate Summit is told
A Nigerian environmental activist has declared at the first African Climate Summit that carbon markets are “bogus solutions."
The summit has sought to reframe the African continent, which has enormous amounts of clean energy minerals and renewable energy sources, as less of a victim of climate change driven by the world’s biggest economies and more of the solution.
But investment in the continent in exchange for the ability to keep polluting elsewhere has angered some in Africa who prefer to see China, the United States, India, the European Union and others rein in their emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
“We reject forced solutions on our land,” Priscilla Achakpa, founder of the Nigeria-based Women Environmental Programme, told summit participants on the event’s final day. She urged the so-called “Global North” to “remove yourself from the perspective of the colonial past.”
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The free market isn't going to solve this problem. It isn't profitable to solve climate change.
This is where Governments are meant to step in, to serve the best interests of the people... instead they're too busy bickering over bullshit, and giving themselves and their cronies handouts.
India and China have essentially said they don't give a fuck and will keep burning coal till they run out of coal...
The other big contributer is shipping cheap junk from those same countries to the Western wealthier countries.
That we can do something about by slapping large tarrifs on all that sweatshop shit.
Do that and those countries will change their tune, because their own citizens are too poor for their economies to be self sufficient.
China is investing $6 trillion in green energy initiatives.
Economically isolating your country and cutting off international trade is non-viable and hurts the poor the most.
So after reading the article, there is no information as to what China is spending $6 trillion on. The vast majority of the article discusses how China is building a really long road and that they will be depending on coal until at least 2050.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon
If you're impressed by your number, you just don't understand how big China is...
And tarrifs on cheap foreign profits is really the only way to stimulate internal production. Not sure where you were a few years ago, but COVID should have taught you why domestic production is important
Stimulating internal production is not a goal anyone should have - global isolation hurts citizens.
Bad things happening is not a reason to kneecap your economy.
Lol, yeah...
Because the people working those sweatshops have such great lives too.
Those aren't "suicide nets" in iPhone factories, they're "communal hammocks".
And the countries that don't make anything anymore so they have crazy unemployment levels can just print money so their citizens don't starve too!
It's so easy, why isn't a smart person like you running the economy of every nation?
/s
At least lemmy still has a block button.
Because the people working those sweatshops have such great lives too.
Their lives are demonstrably better than before those opportunities arrived, and the increased wealth enables governments to grow inclusive institutions that ban sweatshops and still benefit from the relative value of the US dollar to local currency
People with my views do run the economy. This is economic orthodoxy.
You're the only one here advocating for globalism.
Globalism is an ideal scenario, yes.
So you're equivalency is saying that slaves had it better in America than they did in Africa?
Doooood. 🤮
No I didn't bring up slavery at all, and equating paid jobs that do not exist until a company invests in a developing nation with slavery is disgustingly offensive.
Developing nations are developing because of outside investment, and equating that to the rape of their lands and people that was chattel slavery is a monstrous thing to do.
Yeah, you did. What else would you call a sweatshop?
Sweatshops, while terrible working conditions, are paid labor and people seek out those jobs because the money is so much better than what they were doing before.
I am not pro sweatshop. International trade is so good for developing nations that even sweatshops are better than what they had. I'm all for treaties that straight up require investment capital to regulate that any foreign suppliers meet a certain level of safety and health regulations.
The reason that foreign investment in labor is profitable is not because of sweatshops but because of comparative advantage. An easy example is Mexico where the US dollar is currently worth 18 pesos, meaning you can pay a Mexican laborer 1/5th of what you pay an American and still are actually paying them more relative to their cost of living than an American.
This is true worldwide and is the essence of global trade, and it is impossible to call this a bad thing without just straight up saying you don't give a shit about the livelihood of the Global South.
Comparative advantage is the reason that standards of living are rising worldwide. This investment spurs local capital growth, grows institutions to be inclusive instead of extractive, and in the long term encourages democratic reforms.
The US should, and does when our President isn't a drooling imbecile, see global trade as a form of soft power and spreading of democracy.
And corporations run the governments.
The free market is the only solution to climate change, and it is absolutely profitable to solve climate change.
The problem, as the article indicates, is that we currently subsidize fossil fuels and do not tax them to pay for their externalities, stacking the deck in favor of fossil fuels companies and away from green energy transitions.
Even with that in place, capital is flying toward green/renewable energy.
A carbon tax is 100% needed, and dividends can be handed out to bottom quintile earners to offset the cost for those who literally cannot survive the increases a carbon tax causes. Problem there is just that taxing fuel in the US almost guarantees you lose your next election.
The free market is the only solution to climate change, and it is absolutely profitable to solve climate change.
Problem there is just that taxing fuel in the US almost guarantees you lose your next election.
These are not mutually exclusive.