COP27
Climate Change Conference, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt,
November
6-20, 2022
COP27 in Brief
The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27
was held
from November 6 to
20, 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. More than 45,000
participants
attended, including official
government
delegations and some 100 world leaders. Lobbyists for the big
banks and
climate hedge funds
were everywhere, including integrated into official delegations such as Canada's. Lobbyists
for the oil and gas industry outnumbered the delegations of many
countries. At the same
time, security was tight.
While COP27 was a United Nations event, the organizers went to
great
pains to ensure the
kind of protests seen at COP26 in Glasgow demanding that the
rich be
held to account could
not take place this time. Even the official COP27 app for
participants
to access services and
information turned out to harbour spyware to monitor
conversations,
activities and movements
of every participant that downloaded the app.
The financiers and their political representatives did their
utmost to
have COP27 focus on
rolling out a climate change agenda according to the interests
of the
financial oligarchy. This
aim was counter to the demand of the majority of countries and
peoples of the world that
reparations for loss and damages due to climate change and for
adaptation should be paid for
by the rich who have created the problem in the first place.
The financiers, climate hedge funds and their political
representatives
at COP27 pushed an
agenda that the victims of climate change globally should indebt
themselves even further
through a variety of "green" pay-the-rich schemes, aimed at
diverting
the people and reaping
profits for the very people who have caused the crisis. "Loss
and
damage" funding, which
was agreed to at COP 26 as a key element for COP27 was
completely left
off the initial
agenda. It was only the insistence of those countries who are
suffering
the most from climate
change, led by the G77+China, that forced inclusion of a loss
and
damage fund onto the
agenda. The G77+China represents over 134 countries and 5
billion of
the world's
population.
Indeed, the United Nations declared the key achievement at COP27
was
the "historic decision
to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund,
particularly
for nations most
vulnerable to the climate crisis." At the same time a UN news
release
summing up COP27
said that "while the negotiated text recognized the need for
financial
support from a variety of
sources, no decisions have been made on who should pay into the
fund,
where this money
will come from and which countries will benefit."
The global financiers and their political representatives did
their
utmost to renege on the
decision taken a year earlier in Glasgow at COP26 to establish
such a
fund.
In fact they have not
followed through on most of their climate crisis pledges. None
of the
imperialist countries
have fulfilled their commitments made as far back as 2009 to
fund $100
billion a year for
climate change mitigation. The lobbyists for the oil and gas at
COP 27
also succeeded in
rolling back previous decisions to limit hydro carbon greenhouse
gas
emissions. They
succeeded in having oil and gas designated as "green" energy at
COP27.
U.S. Grandstanding
The U.S. went
to COP27 to assert its "leadership" position and tout a
number of
new initiatives. President Biden addressed the summit on
November 11.
He highlighted the
Inflation Reduction Act, as the "most important
climate bill in the history of our
country." In fact, it is a multi-billion dollar pay-the-rich
scheme to
establish U.S. hegemony
in "green technologies" at the expense of U.S. competitors such
as
China, and U.S.
allies as well, including Germany, France, Japan, south Korea,
and
others. Biden declared that
his administration is working with "our Congress to deliver more
than
$11 billion a year to
international climate finance."
U.S. Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was there
throughout,
announcing one
pay-the-rich program launched by U.S. imperialism after the
other,
including: Biden's $3
billion "Green Shipping Challenge" and $250 million for
Accelerating
Adaptation in Africa
and the U.S. Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience
(PREPARE).
The U.S. Special
Representative for Global Partnerships signed a Memorandum of
Understanding with the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (a
multilateral
agency that has a joint
mandate with the World Trade Organization) to promote "green"
corporations. The U.S.
gangsters announced no less than 12 such programs and pledged,
yet
again, billions of dollars
to assert so-called U.S. leadership globally on climate crisis
action.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 27 - April 20 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS542714.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca