We are one of just three countries, as I understand it, which has offered any money at all.
Loss and damage is this year's pet theme. It's around the broad idea that poor countries cop the worst of climate change damage, so the rich countries should pay for that.
The sad fact is, even if they did, what would it achieve in terms of climate change?
If you accept that Tuvalu is going under water because of us burning coal, does handing them money stop them going underwater? No, it does not. Does it make them feel better about going underwater? Who knows?
So loss and damage is yet another invention that doesn’t address, or go anywhere close, to addressing the actual reason they have had COPs 1 through 27.
But the main point is this. Three countries have pledged money. Only three, out of a couple of hundred. What does that tell you? The world doesn’t give a monkey’s.
And that is critical to the farmers.
The Prime Minister's argument around He Waka Eke Noa was that although it penalises the farmers, although it's not what the farmers signed up to, although it reduces our output of the very product that makes us so much foreign income, although the gap will merely be filled by producers from other less productive countries, we, she declared in her nuclear moment, would be leading the world.
And when we lead the world, she claimed the world will stop, look, and then act.
So loss and damage is yet another invention that doesn’t address, or go anywhere close, to addressing the actual reason they have had COPs 1 through 27.
But the main point is this. Three countries have pledged money. Only three, out of a couple of hundred. What does that tell you? The world doesn’t give a monkey’s.
And that is critical to the farmers.
The Prime Minister's argument around He Waka Eke Noa was that although it penalises the farmers, although it's not what the farmers signed up to, although it reduces our output of the very product that makes us so much foreign income, although the gap will merely be filled by producers from other less productive countries, we, she declared in her nuclear moment, would be leading the world.
And when we lead the world, she claimed the world will stop, look, and then act.
Except, they won't. As the $20 million for loss and damage shows.
If they don't stop for $20 million do you think they’ll stop when they see us cripple our farming industry?
In that is the tragedy of ideology that isn't remotely connected to the real world. Nothing wrong with highfalutin ideals, just don’t run yourself bankrupt in the process.
And don't delude yourself that the actions of a minuscule little island at the bottom of the world makes one jot of difference to anyone.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
1 comment:
These summits are a waste of time and CO2 generation. Last time we wasted delegats time by an adolescent girl delivering a speech which would not have rated in any (significant) school competition (unless perhaps if delivered in te reo). Hours have been spent on the possible plight of a few hundred thousand fast breeding atoll dwellers. I suppose having become so enured to succumbing to maori we were a soft touch for "compensation" . What is past is past. If western naval and military had not burned so much fuel many of these countries would have been nazi conquered and have something to worry about beside climate change..
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