The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan kicked off Monday in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election and with many key leaders not even showing 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.
In 2009, then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised “new and additional” funds of $100 billion annually by 2020 if developing countries agreed to future carbon cuts.
The rich world didn’t deliver, and most funding was simply repackaged and often mislabeled development aid.
This fiasco notwithstanding, developing countries now want more money.
In 2021 India stated that it alone would need $100 billion annually for its own transition. This year, China, India, Brazil and South Africa agreed rich nations should increase their financing “from billions of US dollars per year to trillions of US dollars.”
