Loss and damage fund, filled by miljonairs…?- COP28
The first result of COP28 seems to be already there, a loss and damage fund for ‘weaker’ countries. However, there was already an agreed-upon investment fund to help those countries get into transition. But that fund is not functioning, still largely empty, so nice words, we have yet to see it all happen… Moreover, if those investments lag behind, then the loss and damage fund will only need to grow larger because the problems continue to escalate. Or is that the stick behind the door for the rich countries…?
But yes, those funds need to be filled, and so you have to make money somehow, and with what then? With oil and gas-related activities. Otherwise, the current wealth is not even possible. Think abandoning oil and gas tomorrow (and coal), and then see what is still possible…
The UAE is behind the scenes making deals for gas and oil deliveries. Of course, because what did you think, that they would voluntarily leave those reserves unused? That’s how they became rich; they built skying halls in the desert, built cooled football stadiums, and even cooled beaches: at one hotel near the Gulf, or are there already more, the sand on the beach is cooled because otherwise, you burn your feet on the way to cool off in the sea. Well, cool off, that sea is acceleratedly warming up because seawater is used for that cooling, which as a heat exchanger transports sand heat to the sea.
Apart from the fact that they don’t even have drinking water, and everything has to be filtered from the sea with expensive processes. It may sound crazy, but I see the rest of the world doing the same in a few years. Spain is already partly dependent on seawater desalination plants. And it’s increasing, shrinking fresh water supplies due to disappearing glaciers or simply due to drought, and in many countries more and more buildings cooled because it’s too hot. In the UAE, they’re already doing all that: with our oil dollars. Because no one is going to give up oil and gas; it will be milked to the last drop, and we are addicted to it.
But well, that’s not what I wanted to talk about… It’s not only countries that play a role here. It’s also billionaires and multimillionaires who generally don’t care about society, have enriched themselves based on excessive energy and material investments, and then start playing Santa Claus themselves. And in doing so, they evade (inter)national collective agreements, financing their own hobbies, well-intentioned or not. Shouldn’t we force them instead to fill a loss and damage fund to repair the damage they have caused? Because that wealth is primarily due to (products of) cheap oil and gas. Otherwise, this whole society wouldn’t even be possible. But even then, they have undoubtedly exploited people in poor countries, created polluting industries, depleted excessive water sources (e.g. irrigation), depleted agricultural lands, and so on.
In the second place, they increasingly withdraw from any authority. They are no longer controlled by national governments; they stand above the countries, and the time is not far off when they just buy a whole country and then become the owner/dictator. In fact, it’s already happening on a small scale, land grabbing. But I mainly think of the really big players like Musk. He has his own rockets, and even his own satellites and communication systems, worldwide networks that the UN is jealous of. We stand by and watch to see it happen.
I can only conclude that it is time for a limit on wealth. How high should that limit be? I thought of 10 million: that’s a hundred times 3 times the average annual income, someone should be able to get by on that, you would think?
I wrote these words end of last week, and to my surprise, this weekend I read in the newspaper about limitarianism for the first time, which exactly supports that [1]. Professor Ingrid Robeyns apparently wrote a book about it. And what does she suggest as an upper limit? Exactly, 10 million euros.
But well, everything above the 10 million, we put into what we call a ‘loss and damage fund.’ I cal, the delegates to arrange for this at COP 28 this week and to be managed by the UN. Right?
Start filling….
[1] https://www.uu.nl/en/in-the-media/what-is-limitarianism-professor-ingrid-robeyns-explains