Penna Dexter

Negotiators at the latest United Nations climate conference are touting a “breakthrough agreement” emanating from their recent gathering in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. COS27 — the 27^th UN climate conference — ended with commitments by the U.S. and other wealthy countries to compensate poor countries for the damage allegedly caused by climate change.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the rationale for setting up this “loss and damage” fund is that “industrialization has increased temperatures and led to natural disasters.” John Kerry, chief negotiator for the U.S., has said such transfers could run into the trillions of dollars. Yet President Biden signed us up.

As the Journal’s Gerard Baker explains, “The idea is that developing countries are being literally inundated with the costs of climate change in the form of rising sea levels, extreme weather, and other horsemen of the meteorological apocalypse.” This assumes that human-caused climate change is the cause of these disasters — a premise that’s far from settled.

In a column titled, “The West Made the World Prosperous and Now We Must Pay,” Gerard Baker argues against “the idea that the least developed countries in the world have received only the cost of industrialization and not its many benefits.” But advocates for climate justice insist that, because the U.S. became wealthy using fossil fuels, we must pay “climate reparations” to countries the UN defines as “developing.”

Poor nations suffer disproportionately from natural disasters because they are poor. In their quest to banish fossil fuels from the planet, UN climate warriors have been pushing for policies that would deny developing nations access to the cheap, reliable sources of energy they need for growth. Ten years ago, the U.N. established a fund to pay poor countries to forgo the use of fossil fuels. Rich countries are supposed to contribute $100 billion per year. Washington Post columnist Marc Theissen asks, “Why should American taxpayers pay developing countries not to develop?”

Climate reparations will never replace good economic policy.