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Naming Climate Villains [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-20  

World leaders gathered in New York at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly the week of September 18. While 140 government heads attended, Joseph Biden was the only leader of one of the five the permanent members of the UN Security Council present. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people, mostly young, marched in the streets of New York demanding immediate action to address climate change.

In his United Nations speech, President Biden either discussed or mentioned a list of issues confronting the world today including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fentanyl abuse, artificial intelligence, terrorism, human rights, women’s rights, L.G.B.T. rights, arms control, and climate change. Biden stressed the danger the world faces from climate change, heat waves, wildfires, drought and floods. He assured the assembly that “the United States has treated this crisis as the existential threat from the moment we took office, not only for us, but for all of humanity.”

In his speech, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, scolded world leaders for “abysmally short” efforts to stem fossil fuel emissions and called on them to stop expanding coal, oil and gas production. According to Guterres, “The fossil fuel age has failed.” Always the diplomat, Guterres concentrated on persuasion and did not name climate criminals endangering human civilization.

Despite Biden’s assurance that the United States views climate change as an “existential threat,” after declining in 2020, the production of fossil fuels by the United States in 2021, including natural gas, crude oil, and coal, increased by 2%. The U.S. is currently projected to produce about 12.4 million barrels of oil per day in 2023 and 12.8 million in 2024, surpassing the previous record of 12.3 million barrels per day set in 2019.

The world’s poorest countries and poorest people are the most vulnerable to climate change, even though they have the lowest carbon footprint. They want the worst polluters today and historically to pay the cost of adapting to climate change and repairing climate devastation. Under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, wealthy greenhouse gas emitters like the United States and Europe committed to paying a $100 billion per year to address the impact of climate change on poorer countries but they have not lived up to their promise. Only a small fraction of the aid they do provide has helped build sea walls to protect against rising sea levels or farmers cope with drought.

Unlike Guterres, I have no problem naming climate villains.

China is the highest fossil fuel polluter today producing 10 million tons of CO2 or about 30% of the total emissions. The United States is second producing 5.4 million tons of CO2 or about 14% of the total. However, the United States by far has the highest per capita emissions at 17.6 tons of CO2 per person. In second place is South Korea at 12.6 tons per person. Historically, between 1750 and 2021, the United States produced 421.9 billion tons of CO2 emissions, about 35% of the world’s total.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/20/2194489/-Naming-Climate-Villains

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