It should be fairly clear to all that solving the climate challenges of an overheated planet will require cooperation between all nations. It can be hard to imagine such a thing today, with madmen running businesses in Brazil, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Russia – just to name a few.
But let’s think positively for a moment. If enough droughts, forest fires and famines occur, if enough cities sink under the waves, and several billion people die early deaths due to excessive heat, maybe, just maybe, there will be a sense of collective necessity and nations will agree to push aside petty jealousy and religious strife to save the planet from developing a climate inhospitable to human life. Hard to think? Sure it is, but work with me here.
George Monbiot, who considers me the only healthy person left on the planet, has a new idea. He says the rich countries should forgive all the debt owed to them by what we kindly call “third world countries”, so instead of using the scarce resources to pay their creditors, they can rather use that money in climate policies like clean energy technology and maybe have a little left over to feed their hungry people.
Radical, I know. To understand this in detail, one will have to read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine to fully understand how the leading nations of the world have enslaved billions of people by placing heavy burdens on them in the form of debt they can never – not in a million years – pay off.
You can get a taste of what it’s like for those countries from the iconic Tennessee Ernie Ford song 16 Tons, in which he tells of the hardships of a coal miner who loads coal all day just to find himself deeper in debt when the sun sak.
I am not worthy to interfere with Monbiot’s carefully crafted prose, and therefore I will simply share it with you to read for yourself. When you have finished reading, please share your reaction to his ideas in the comments section.
There’s a simple way to unite everyone behind climate justice – and it’s within our power.
The cancellation of poor countries’ historical debt will enable their governments to channel money into climate adaptation
By George Monbiot, columnist for Guardian. 25 June 2022
It was too easy to stop people from uniting around the crucial issues of our time. Those who demand better pay and conditions for workers and justice for poor people have been pitted by demagogues and corporate lobbyists against those who demand a habitable planet.
We have struggled for years with the question of how to overcome this division and create a social and environmental justice platform that can unite large numbers of the people of the world. Only one thing was clear: any such campaign had to be led by activists from poorer nations. Now I believe, the breakthrough has arrived.
Developed by fighters in some of the world’s most exploited countries, it’s a brilliant idea: simple but systemic. Rich nations owe a massive climate debt to poorer nations: for the devastating impact of the fossil fuels we have burned. Yet they have no intention of paying for the loss and damage they have caused. Poor countries are considered to owe massive financial debt to the rich nations, but they cannot pay it without destroying their economies and their ecosystems.
The proposal is at the same time to cancel both the climate and the financial debt, freeing up the money that poorer nations need to take climate action. Debt for Climate, mobilization of labor, social and climate movements in 28 countries, will be launched by campaigners during the G7 summit in Germany, which begins on Sunday.
To better understand this proposition, let’s start with the poorer world’s debt, now largely forgotten in the rich world. The powerful campaigns to cancel it in the 1990s almost disappeared from the public eye. This is not because the crisis has been averted. Far from it: between 1990 and 2019, foreign debt in the global south (the poorer nations) rose on average from about 90% of their GDP to 170%. The pandemic has accelerated the crisis: 135 out of 148 nations in the poorer world are now classified as “critically indebted.”
Fighters often speak of “heinous debts”, meaning loans agreed by dictatorships, which offer no benefit to the nation. But all the debt owed by poor nations to the rich world and its corporations could be seen in this way. The idea that the global south, plundered and enslaved for centuries, owes money to its exploiters is grotesque.
An analysis in the journal Global Environmental Change indicates that $ 10 trillion worth of wealth is extracted each year by rich people from poorer countries, in the form of raw materials, energy, land and labor. That is 70 times as much money as would be needed to end extreme poverty worldwide. This exploitation provides rich nations with a quarter of their GDP: much of our apparent wealth depends on exploitation.
Guilt is imperialism in other ways. This is equivalent to the hut tax levied by the British in their African colonies. This tax, often levied in currencies not owned by Africans, forced them to hand over their resources or their labor to colonial projects. Today, foreign debt forces nations to give their assets to rich countries and multinational corporations.
For example, a report by the Green New Deal suggests that debt has been used by the World Bank as a way to force Senegal to allow US, Australian and British companies to exploit its oil and gas. In Argentina, the International Monetary Fund has reportedly been pushing for the development of the giant Vaca Muerta shale gas bowl by using similar leverage. Poorer nations, impoverished and forced by debt, have little choice but to allow destructive industries to exploit them. Fighters have a term for this: debt trap diplomacy.
It is not only withdrawal that makes this debt possible, but also austerity. An analysis by Oxfam indicates that 85% of the Covid loans that the IMF has made to poorer countries are related to austerity programs: the fund uses the power of debt to pressure nations to cut wage bills and less to public services and to spend support for the poor. people.
While poorer nations must give up their wealth, they must also suffer from the climate invasion imposed on them by the rich. An analysis by Jason Hickel, in The Lancet Planetary Health, indicates that the former G8 countries are responsible for 85% of the CO2 emissions responsible for dangerous levels of heating. Yet the overwhelming majority of deaths caused by climate change are happening in the global south. It represents a massive climate debt that cannot simply be expressed in financial terms.
Forced austerity and forced exploitation of fossil fuel reserves are threads that could bring together climate and social justice campaigns around the world. Debt for Climate proposes a global uprising against debt and austerity, linked to the prevention of climate change.
It calls on poor world governments to refuse to pay their debts, and to channel the money they would otherwise have to pay into public services, climate adaptation and a fair transition from fossil fuels. It calls on activists in the rich world to demand the cancellation of debt and an end to austerity, both at home and abroad, and recover for the devastating loss and damage caused by our greenhouse gas emissions.
By reviving the question of who owes whom, large constituencies – labor and green, north and south – can develop a common platform. Climate campaigns are indivisible from global justice. (Emphasis added.)
Check out our brand new E-bike guide. If you are curious about electric bikes, this is the best place to start your e-mobility journey!
Do you appreciate CleanTechnica’s originality and clean technology news coverage? Consider becoming a CleanTechnica member, Supporter, Technician or Ambassador – or a patron on Patreon.
