The world should confront “climate change” the way it does deadly nuclear weapons, by agreeing to a non-proliferation treaty that ends further use of coal, oil and natural gas energy sources, the U.N.-sponsored COP27 climate conference in Egypt heard Tuesday.
“We all know that the leading cause of climate crisis is fossil fuels,” Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano told his fellow leaders and the 40,000 other attendees and delegates who have flown in to the Sharm El Sheikh resort, AP reports.
So his tiny South Pacific island nation has “joined Vanuatu and other nations calling for a fossil fuels non-proliferation treaty… It’s getting too hot and there is very (little) time to slow and reverse the increasing temperature. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize fast acting strategies that avoids the most warming.”
A year ago at climate talks in Glasgow, a proposal to call for a “phase out” coal was changed at the last minute to “phase down” after a demand from India.
Now the issue has been raised again, with small island nation leaders also demanding a global tax on the profits of fossil fuel corporations as prices rise due to supply restrictions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“While they are profiting the planet is burning,” said Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, speaking on behalf of his and other small island nations.
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa called on similar nations to form a “countermanding bloc of the victims of climate change.”
Meanwhile U.N. chief Antonio Guterres and leaders such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said it was time to make fossil fuel companies contribute to funds which would provide vulnerable countries with financial aid for the climate-related losses they claim they are suffering.
Activists wearing masks with words “Climate Finance Now” protest on the fourth day of the COP27 U.N. Climate Change Conference (Finance Day), held by UNFCCC in Sharm El-Sheikh International Convention Center. (Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Activists demanding climate finance and debt relief for countries exposed to the effects of climate change protest at an impromptu demonstration at the UNFCCC COP27 climate conference on November 09, 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
An annual transfer of funds from rich to poor countries, starting at around $2 trillion by 2030 and rising thereafter, has already been mooted for climate “justice” according to a U.N.-backed report released Tuesday.
China has been specifically excluded from the demand for reparations, which includes taxes for fossil fuel companies on their global “carbon profits,” even as the Communist state’s greenhouse gas emissions now exceed the entire rest of the developed world combined.
And if the small islands can’t get a global tax on fossil fuel profits, Browne suggested going to international courts to get polluters to pay for what they’ve done.
“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,” Antigua’s Browne said. “Profligate producers of fossil fuels have benefited from extortionate profits at the expense of human civilization.”