Climate Justice
TLDR: When someone says “It’s not about money,” it’s about money.
Sri Lanka
Let’s start with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka (ESG score = 98.1) lecturing the world on ESGs and climate solutions at COP 26, on 31 Oct 2021:
Eight Months Later …
It was never about ESG scores or climate. It was always about money.
Tuvalu
In 2022, I read a report in Politico about Tuvalu going to COP27 in Egypt to try to get money from big countries causing them to suffer by emitting CO2. It included this photo, which I certainly don’t have the rights to reproduce here:
This is a very effective photo. Is this a staged photo shoot? Was the woman paid? What is the emotion here? What is the damage? Floods? Hurricanes? Locusts?
It couldn’t be sea-level rise, because anyone can see that sea level at the Funafuti gauge has risen about 12 centimeters (5 inches) in 30 years …
Note the periodic dramatic decreases in the ocean surface level — what’s that about? I have no idea. At this rate, we can expect Tuvalu to have to deal with about 40 cm (16 inches) of rising seas over the next 100 years. It could be more, perhaps, but could also be less. And at least one researcher claims the island is rising and will continue to rise as the ocean does (slowly).
Yet Tuvalu has so far scored more than $45 million in “climate financing.” Not a bad return on their PR spend.
Maldives
The Maldives government has been playing this card for decades. Here is political theater at its finest (watch — it’s short):
That worked. The Maldives have been the beneficiaries of more than $50 million in “climate financing,” which helped them open FOUR NEW AIRPORTS in 2020:
What happened to sea level? Here’s the Maldives’ tide-gauge data:
Looks like the ocean is swallowing up the Maldives even more slowly than it is Tuvalu.
Summary
What’s really going on? This is what’s really going on:
Repeat after me: It’s not about climate. It’s about money.