¶ Intro / Opening
The idea of loss and damages has been a real focal point of the twenty seventh Conference of the Parties, the annual UN Climate negotiations happening in Egypt last year in Glasgow. Global North countries fought to keep the topic off the agenda when it was made. This year's host country, Egypt, vowed to put it on the agenda early and keep it there, and they've kept that promise. But I've been seeing a lot of big gaps in the media coverage
¶ COP27, Loss, Damage, and Funding Gaps
on this issue. Global South countries are often treated like a monolith, and the discussion around how to handle countries that are both on the front lines of the climate crisis and a major target for oil production is almost
non existent. It's something I've been thinking about a lot because we've been reporting a new season for the past two years on Guyana and that country's emergence as an oil producing country, but also because I've spent so much time looking at the history of climate policy and how
certain narratives have been shaped. The remarkable news out of this year's cop is that negotiators, including those from the US, which has historically been a big blocker to loss in damage, agreed to officially establish a lost in Damage fund, but there are still a lot of lingering questions around how the global North and the global South can move forward
on addressing climate together. There's the failure of negotiators to agree to include any language in the final agreement around phasing fossil fuels out, of course, but there are a bunch of other conversations that need to happen to you, and those are all mostly informed by a history that seems to be widely unknown or just ignored. Welcome back
to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. In this episode, we're going to get into that history and unpack some of the messier details around cop and loss and damage that's coming up after this quick break.
We have to ask ourselves, can we ever attain the ultimate objective of the convention, which is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with a climate system. By failing to meet the objective of the convention, we may have rapified our own doom. And if we have failed to meet the objective of the convention, we have to confront the issue of loss and damage.
That's Yeb Sano, the Philippines chief negotiator in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNF Triple C. UNF Triple C is the basis for the annual Conference of the Parties. Those parties are the countries that have signed on to the Framework Convention on Climate Change at SCHOOL. Initially, it was to bring the countries of the world together
to stop catastrophic climate change. During the twenty thirteen COP in Warsaw, Sano's country was being devastated by super typhoon High End, prompting Sauna to make the argument that the UNF Triple C had failed to accomplish its original goal and must now reassess.
Loss and damage is a reality today across the world and developed country emissions reduction targets are dangerously low and must be raised immediately. But even if these were in line with the demand of reducing forty to fifty percent below nineteen nine to levels, we will still have luck in climate change, and we still would need to address the issue of loss and damage.
After giving that speech, Sano went on a hunger strike, saying he would not end it until global North countries committed to funding loss and damage. And here's fact number one that I haven't seen in any news reports on COP.
Those countries. At the twenty thirteen COP they agreed wealthy countries, including the United States, agreed that by twenty twenty they would be putting one hundred billion dollars a year into a loss in Damages fund, But so far only about twenty one billion dollars has ever been put in it, and most of what was supposed to be effectively grant money to global seuth countries in need of adaptation funding was turned into loans. More debt is not something the
majority of global sealth countries need. Last year, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley made history when she convinced the International Monetary Fund to help her hit pause on Barbados's debt payments so that they could devote some of their GDP to climate adaptation instead and hopefully get ahead of some of the climate impacts that they know are heading their way. This year, Motley is at COP with a proposal that would help all Global South countries do the same. It's
called the Bridgetown Agenda. Here's Motley introducing it at COP.
Looks still too much like it did when it was part of an imperialistic empire. The Global North borrows between interest rates of between one to four percent, the global south of fourteen percent, and then we wonder why they
just energy partnerships are not working. Similarly, we ask ourselves, if countries that want to finance their way to NEET zero and want to do the right thing can't get the critical supplies, will they not have to rely again on natural gases that clean bridge This is the ball reality, and we have come here to ask us to open our minds to different possibilities.
Motley laid out the specifics of her plan in that speech too, the establishment of a climate mitigation trust that unlocks five trillion dollars of private sector savings, provided that the IMF will allow the use of its five hundred billion dollars special Drawing Rights reserve. That would require not just a decision by the IMF but also its member states,
¶ The Bridgetown Agenda and Fossil Fuel Accountability
particularly the United States. As Motley made clear.
We believe that we have a plan. We believe that there can be the establishment of a climate mitigation trust that unlocks five trillion dollars of private sector savings if we can summon the will to use the SDRs five hundred billion of SDRs special drawing rights in a way that unlocks the private sector capital We believe that that requires a change in the attitude of Congress, because the agreement that establishes the International Monetary Fund requires eighty five
percent to change that agreement, and if the United States government has seventeen percent of the quarter, then it can't be done, mister Gore without your cognis.
She nodded to al Gore there because he spoke just before her about the need to open up financing for global self countries looking to adapt. But the bridget agenda isn't just about debt, restructuring and the IMF.
We believe that it is critical that we address the issue of loss and damage. The talk must come to an end, and I'd like to salute Denmark in Belgium and Scotland for their own modest ways of trying to accept the precepts and principles of loss and damage as critical and as morally just. But for loss and damage to work, we believe that it can't only be an issue of asking state parties to do the right things, although they must.
Mat We also made a convincing argument for drawing fossil fuel companies into the web of accountability at cop It was a particularly interesting proposal given that once again the industry has more delegates at COP than any one country.
But we believe that the non state actors and the stakeholders, the oil and gas companies and those who facilitate them, need to be brought into a special convocation between now and COP twenty eight. How do companies make two hundred billion dollars in profits in the last three months and not expect to contribute at least ten cents in every
dollar of profit to a loss of damage fund. This is what our people expect, and I ask us, as we reflect on what a loss and damage fund can look like and who should access it, that we convene a special convocation that doesn't only involve of state parties, but non state actors such as the same companies.
Motley has indicated that the G seven countries Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States seem generally supportive
of her plan. None of them has officially signed on yet, but it would be a really big deal if the final COP agreement contains some version of the Bridgetown Agenda, particularly the requirement that fossil fuel companies contribute to loss and damages US Climate star John Carey has been talking about the need for the private sector to fund loss and damages, and his idea to make that happen is
a carbon market. But if you're going to ask fossil fueld companies to pay for the carbon they're emitting today, what about their historic contributions to climate change? Where's the private sector accountability on that front. Motley's proposal at least names that particular elephant, which brings me to the broader history of COP and the fossil fuel industry. As I've talked about in previous episodes, the industry was at the
table from Jump. They were there influencing government officials when the UN Framework Conventional Climate Change was drafted. Way back in nineteen ninety two at the Real Earth Summit, the guy we've talked about a lot on this show, E. Bruce Harrison, brought together the various industries and companies that might be impacted by emissions regulations into a group called the Global Climate Coalition. He also started working internationally in advance of the Real Earth Summit because he saw this
whole cop situation coming a mile away. That's because back in nineteen seventy two, Harrison had seen the impact of the first UN environmental summit, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which earthed the Stockholm Declaration. This groundbreaking document made environmental issues global that emphasize is conservation, the redistribution of resources, and state responsibility for environmental damage both
within and beyond their borders. It also had zero concern for business, to the extent that industry was included at all in the UNCCH negotiations, it was as a culprit and a threat, not a partner. The first principle put forth in Stockholm Declaration reads quote man has the fundamental
¶ Fossil Fuel Industry's Historical Influence
right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life in an environment of equality that permits a life of dignity and well being. And he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for president and future generations.
Later on, the Declaration reaffirms nation's sovereign right to extract their own resources, but notably balances that right with the mandate that countries must quote ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of
national jurisdiction. The Stockholm Declaration led to the creation of new international laws, norms, and organizations focused on environmental protection, including the United Nations Environmental Program, which was formed as a permanent agency to act as the environmental conscience of
the UN. The Stockholm Declaration, combined with the creation of the EPA and the passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in the US, was a massive pr crisis for American industry and a huge opportunity for a Bruce Harrison. Throughout the eighties, Harrison scored himself invitations and speaking engagements at various UNIP events, where he pushed the idea that the more companies participated in the creation of
environmental policies, the more effective those policies would be. To be clear, Harrison was not the only person getting that idea in the eighties, nor was his message a hard sell. Plenty of people were happy to embrace a business friendly approach that required no economic trade offs, but given his
domestic and international influence, Harrison was a driving force. In the late nineteen eighties, he created two organizations, the Global Climate Coalition, which brought together manufacturers, oil companies, automotive, rail and various other industries into a group that could shape the global response to climate change, and envirocom an international network of PR firms that would all use the same
corporate messaging on environmental issues. Their state admission was to monitor emerging environmental policy all over the world for their clients and to influence that policy through strategic lobbying. Was to fully integrate industry into the international approach to environmental issues, and the strategy was enormously successful. At the nineteen ninety two Rio Summit. There was none of the urgency or directness of the Stockholm Declaration. Gone was the emphasis on
government regulation. It was replaced by a sort of big tent approach that included business interests and prioritized compromise. Agenda twenty one, one of the defining documents out of that nineteen ninety two summit, reads, in order to meet the challenge of environment and development, states have decided to establish
a new global partnership. It is recognized that for the success of this new partnership, it is important to overcome confrontation and to foster a climate of genuine cooperation and solidarity. It was at the many events run by a business surrounding that nineteen ninety two REO or summit that Harrison presented his paper on the concept of sustainable communication, or
what we now call greenwashing. Here's Melissa Aronchick, a media studies scholar at Rutgers University and author of the book A Strategic Nature, which unpacks a lot of this history.
I think it would be unfair to say, you know, he invented the idea of corporate social responsibility. That would be a little too much. But what we can say is that he did invent the idea of sustainable communication, which was so genius when you think about it, because
¶ Greenwashing and Business at Rio Summit
what is sustainable communication means? It means communicating in such a way as to maintain sustainable relationships with the people that matter, the people who are going to vote for you, or the people who are going to support whatever it is your clients are doing. It does not mean sustainable practices or behaviors to protect the environment.
Person wasn't exactly delivering his message to an unfriendly audience. Maurice Strong, the organizer of the Rio Earth Summit, was a former oil man himself and often talked about the need for industry to be part of any effective climate solution.
It's also really important to remember that Maurice Strong, who was the organizer of that United Nations conference, was committed to having business participate in the conference. Maurice Strong was quite compelled or convinced by the idea that if you did not have business as a key stakeholder in these conversations about sustainable development, that you would never be able to enforce it. You needed to have business at the table and in agreement.
In contrast to the nineteen seventy two convening, the un encouraged business community participation in Rio in nineteen ninety two and industry groups were ready to take advantage.
Because business communities had been invited to the conference, and because they knew that their buying was so important, they planned extensively in the lead up to the conference to be able to present what they called their own sustainable development Charter. And as you can imagine, this charter was, you know, it did not contain anything that would have
really transformed how companies did business. It was a very business as usual document, but it paid a lot of lip service to the idea of going green, being sustainable, being very concerned about the environment. And because they got out in front of the actual conference and the other
types of events that were being designed. They were really able to put that document forward and stave off other kinds of more binding legislation or more draconian regulations that would have caused problems for these companies profits.
By the time the third cop in Kyoto rolled around, industry was deeply entrenched in the process and absolutely determined to prevent a binding treaty from ever being ratified by the US. The Global Climate Coalition was at its peak at this point, fully funded and fighting the idea of Kyoto at every turn. Here's Brown University environmental sociologist doctor Robert Brule.
The fossil fuel guys, they don't appeal to your head. They appeal to your emotions. And then when it comes to, you know, the economic impact, they're gonna basically, you know, you're gonna be cold and dark, eating you know, raw vegetables, you know. And it's an emotive function. That what the pr genius is. And you know, if you look at the commercial for the Global Climate, the gccs it's not
global and it won't work. They get a map of the globe and they start cutting out the countries that don't have to comply, you know, with the Kyoto Protocol and they're cutting out China, India, and all of Africa, South America, and then they all that dispap all of these holes in it. You know, they said, this isn't fair, it won't work, and it's not fair. And that's what
¶ Resisting Kyoto and the Development Myth
they ran on and guess what it worked.
They worked with Senators Chuck Hagel and Robert Byrd to bake that idea into a resolution governing whether or not the United States could ratify Kyoto. Here's a Global Climate Coalition Chair Constance Holmes talking about it all back then.
In July nineteen ninety seven, the Senate passed the bird Hegel Resolution on a ninety five to nothing vote, almost a nonprecedented vote. That resolution said, in essence, the Senate would not ratify an agreement that is not global, or would not ratify an agreement that caused the United States economy harmed. The Kyoto Protocol does not meet either test
of the bird Hegel Resolution. The restrictions of the Kyoto Agreement apply only to thirty eight countries of the developed world, with no provision for participation of even the more developed of the rest of the world. On the first day of the Buenos Aires meeting the developing countries acting as a group, the Group of seventy seven in China refused to let the subject of developing country voluntary participation remain on the agenda.
Fast forward thirty years and now it's the fossil fuel industry arguing that those seventy seven countries really need to be able to delay emissions reductions. Why because international oil companies need those countries oil to replace their reserves, and they need their citizens to keep burning fossil fuels as citizens in the Global North are reducing their usage. Without both,
the industry is doomed. Here's Steve call, investigative journalist and author of the book Private Empire, about Exonmobile.
They need the oil they have to replace what they pump every year, and they're just aren't that many places left where an American oil company can own the oil that they produce, And that's what Wall Street judges them by.
That's very different from the picture of the US fossil fuel industry pains today when they talk about their projects in the Global selth or about the benefits of quote unquote cheap energy to those countries. Here's Mandy Gunnisakara a spokesperson for the CO two coalition, sort of a modern day global climate coalition, testifying to Congress on this front.
This country's ability to harness our vast energy resources and a responsible in an efficient manner has changed millions of lives for the better. It is why life expectancy and economic growth, both important indicators of human flourishing, have significantly improved. Advancements in fossil based energy, and the development of modern economies has provided access to life saving technologies like heat
during winter, water treatment, medicine, and refrigeration. A stark contrast exists today in countries that do not have sophisticated energy systems or access to affordable, reliable electricity, and parts of the developing world, life expectancy today is ten to twenty years shorter, and children under five regularly succumbed to preventable diseases.
The reality is that we could change these outcomes by sharing our successful energy technologies, not by prohibiting their use as a result of misaligned environmental policies.
The conversation gets a little messier when oil producing countries in the global South advocate for the ability to develop and use the fossil fuels within their borders for longer. And it makes sense. How dare the global North, which has amassed so much wealth thanks to abundant fossil fuels, turn around and tell the global South that they can't
do the same. I asked Melinda Jenki, an attorney who's fighting to shut down oil drilling in her country, Guyana, this question, especially because it's not just Exonmobile making this argument about the benefit of oil to Guyana, but many of her fellow citizens too.
The global North has basically broken the global climate system as a result of greenhouse gas pollution, and I think we should stop talking about emissions and call it what it is, which is pollution from fossil fuels. It is incredibly stupid for anybody to say, well, because you did something bad and broke it, we now have a right to do something bad and break it.
Even further, Steve call notes that you need only look at the last one hundred years or so to see that when oil comes to town citizens are not in fact lifted out of poverty.
Does not pan out for anyone other than the elites of those countries. That's what the record shows, and development economics,
¶ Debunking the Fossil Fuel Development Myth
you know, it may not be a hard science like physics. But it has pretty well established that the so called resource curse in developing countries is a real thing, over and over again. And it's not only oil. Other resources can produce the same cycle. But partly what happens is that the elites that control the resource that produces sudden wealth and sudden opportunity generally don't distribute the benefits equitably.
And I'm not even talking about some utopian socialist kind of perfect distribution, but even just to reinvest it in a sustainable strategy of private enterprise lad development just generally doesn't happen. There are a few examples of rulers who lived for ten or fifteen years and who weren't so selfish as to keep it all for themselves and so on, but they are more the exception than the rule. And
it's not just about the greed of elites. It's also about the way sudden wealth distorts the patterns of investment in a country by essentially alleviating the pressure to educate a new generation of young scientists and tech entrepreneurs or wealth creators, or people who are going to figure out how to save and improve agriculture in an era of climate Chain said all of these urgent problems that emerging countries face in the global South, I mean, they get
displaced by the easy money that comes from a resource boom, and so you end up not only running out of the bounty when the oil is depleted, but you've missed the opportunity to pursue, you know, course of development, like the one easy example that is often cited I think for good reason, and it can be distorted around, you know, issues of culture or race and can be I think misstated. But with that caveat, I mean, in the nineteen fifties, Nigeria and South Korea had roughly the same per capita
income and they were both very poor countries. South Korea had just emerged from a terrible long experience of Warnaki patient and Nigeria was blessed with this huge oil bounty, and South Korea chose to kind of industrialize on its own without a lot of resources. And in you know, a single generation, one country got rich and the other one, uh,
you know, cycled through the resource curse. And you know, economists point to that and say, you know, statistically, Nigeria may look like it had greater wealth, but in the experience of its society, the wealth you know, ran off shore and often kind of displaced opportunities that Nigeria might have had to build a more sustainable economy.
And the vast majority of cases, the big winners in these deals are not global self countries, but the global north companies that profit from their oil, much of which is exported out of the country, and no matter where you are in the world, proximity to oil and gas development is more guarantee of cheap energy. In the US, for example, Gulf Coast residents have some of the highest electricity bills in the country, which brings us back to
where we began. Given the presence of fossil fuel influence on COPS since its inception, and the rising number of fossil fuel delegates every year, maybe it's time to include them as official parties just as responsible for turning the tide on climate and paying for damages as the governments they have manipulated over the years. At a minimum, it's interesting to think about Motley's suggestion that a sort of interim can meaning with fossil fuel company is held accountable,
could happen in between cops. Lots to think about and I'll definitely be keeping tabs on how everything continues to unfold. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. Don't forget also to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. As the future of Twitter remains a bit unpredictable, I am starting to do a lot of the things that I did on there in this weekly roundup of climate coverage, So you'll get a list of five or six of the stories or studies that I think are really important in
the week and why, delivered to your inbox. You can sign up for that at Drilled podcast dot com. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. Our producer is Sarah Ventry. Sound design, mixing and mastering are by Peter Duff, who also wrote our original score. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton at the First Amendment Project, and the show is reported, written and hosted by me Amy Westerbelt.