Robbing the poorest to pay for climate change

Robbing the poorest to pay for climate change

By Thomas Fuller
Examiner.com, February 2, 2010

When evil happens what can or should normal citizens do? Can we march? Take to the streets? Call a general strike? This story makes me sick to the stomach and weak at the knees.

“Rich countries are raiding their aid budgets to bankroll a new global fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, one of the world’s leading development campaign groups warned today.

Jamie Drummond, executive director of the One group co-founded by the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, said the west was being “dishonest” about the $30bn (£18bn) of fast-track finance proposed in Copenhagen last month to persuade developing countries to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Drummond said the proposal to spend $10bn a year over the next three years involved no additional money, but was instead being diverted from existing budgets. The impact, he said, would be to divert funds from health and education spending in Africa to infrastructure projects in Asia and Latin America.”

We do not know enough about the extent and impact of climate change to kill poor people to reduce temperatures by a tenth of a degree by the end of the century. This is criminal. It is evil.

If these people manage to survive, their grandchildren will be richer than we are today (according to the IPCC’s conservative estimates) and will be able to pay for mitigation as it is needed. If these people die today, our grandchildren will ask us why we killed them.

Read the rest here