The Human Condition: Climate reparations

By Daniel Schnee on December 7, 2022.

Recently the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) took place in Egypt. It is the key event where world leaders gather to discuss agriculture, the impact of shipping on the world’s oceans, renewable energy and other issues faced by humanity.

That is, they could gather to discuss issues facing humanity, but what they actually gathered to do is greenwash their various activities to once again pass the buck on pollution, climate change and so on. Which is not to say I am cynical, doubting that they can or ever would tackle these issues in a significant way. But “greenwashing” – presenting an organization or company as being more environmentally conscious than it actually is – is so common at COP27 that it is a miracle anyone had the time to actually discuss any issues.

What I am particularly concerned with though is what I call ‘typhoon-washing,’ the act of presenting a single storm as proof of climate change in its entirety. For example, when a particularly nasty hurricane occurs and devastates a community, this is offered up as proof that climate change caused it, rather than predictable seasonal weather patterns. Certainly, there is undeniable evidence humanity is ‘helping’ the climate degenerate. But no sane scientist can look at a single storm and infer that the climate is changing, since they do not even remotely have enough data to do so.

I bring this up because typhoons cause a lot of damage and are severely upsetting to a community. I lived through a particularly powerful one while living in Japan and they are intense. I even had to stack all the absorbent materials in my apartment against the base of my balcony door and press against it for hours to keep it from being blown through the back wall. It was also the first time I have ever seen rain ‘falling’ horizontally. The damage to the community was significant… and now developing countries want what are known as “climate reparations,” financial compensation from the countries that are said to have caused the atmospheric pollution responsible for any and all storms (i.e. typhoon-washing for profit).

U.S. President Joe Biden declared he would pay these climate reparations… though China is still listed as a developing country and could gain access to the billions of dollars paid out. Climate justice for China, a country that is planning to build more brand new coal plants in the next couple of years than all of the coal plants that currently exist in the entire U.S. Thankfully, the American government shot that idea down.

You cannot just link climate change to a single storm and then demand reparations, as if my driving my car to the store to buy milk is something for which Canada has to make amends. I have not wronged anyone by using my car, and neither have Alberta’s oil workers for making it go.

We cannot (and will not) develop any consensus or unity over the matter if we are blamed for a random typhoon thousands of miles away, and our taxes become, in essence, fines.

Even Greta Thunberg was critical of the goings-on of COP27. And you know something must be wrong if Greta and I are on the same page…

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer.

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