Big Oil must pay for climate change

GBNEWS24DESK//

Leaders from poor countries criticized wealthy governments and oil companies for driving global warming, using their speeches yesterday at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt to demand that they pay up for damages being inflicting on their economies.

Small island states already buffeted by increasingly violent ocean storms and sea-level rise called on oil companies to shell out some of their huge recent profits, while developing African states called for more international funds.

“The oil and gas industry continues to earn almost 3 billion United States dollars daily in profits,” said Gaston Browne, Antigua’s prime minister, speaking at the conference on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States.

“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global carbon tax on their profits as a source of funding for loss and damage,” he said. “While they are profiting, the planet is burning.”

The comments reflected the tension in international climate negotiations between rich and poor states, as delegates attended the second full day of the two-week UN conference in the seaside resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Multi-billion-dollar oil industry profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which roiled markets and disrupted supplies – have angered governments worldwide concerned about climate change and rampant consumer inflation.

US President Joe Biden this month said the industry was raking in “war profits” and proposed a windfall tax, an idea that has little chance of passing a deeply divided Congress.

But some countries at the conference were more likely to direct their frustration at wealthy nations, not drillers.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall told the conference poor developing countries in Africa needed increased funding from rich nations for adaptation to worsening climate change, and would resist calls for an immediate shift away from fossil fuels African countries need to fuel their economies.

“Let’s be clear, we are in favor of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. But we Africans cannot accept that our vital interests be ignored,” he said.

Chandrikapersad Santokhi, president of Suriname – a South American nation whose forests absorb more carbon than its people emit – said wealthy countries needed to uphold a promise to direct $100 billion a year to developing countries for climate adaptation.

Sri Lanka’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said Western governments were quick to divert billions of dollars to the war in Ukraine, but slow to spend on climate change.