Army troops evacuate people from a flood-hit area in Rajanpur, district of Punjab, Pakistan, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022.
Asim Tanveer/AP
Leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week focused on inequality.
The climate crisis and the energy transition are widening disparities, leaders said.
Rich countries must meet pledges to help those least responsible for the crisis, advocates say.
A major theme emerging from the discussions at New York’s Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly is how the climate crisis and the energy transition are exacerbating inequality.
On Sunday, ahead of the annual gathering, Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico and left millions of people and businesses without power. Puerto Rico’s electric grid was already unreliable, having never fully recovered from Hurricane Maria, which hit five years ago. The Dominican Republic also got slammed, forcing President Luis Abinader to cancel his trip to New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan is still reeling from monsoon rains as the death toll rises to nearly 1,500, and severe drought in sub-Saharan Africa is fueling food insecurity.
These regions combined have contributed less than 1% of historical carbon-dioxide emissions yet are bearing the brunt of climate impacts. Wealthier countries like the US and those in Europe, as well as China and Russia, account for the vast majority of emissions but have failed to mobilize the $100 billion in annual climate financing that was pledged in 2009 by COP15 to help poorer nations adapt to global warming.
The natural disasters are fueling climate activists’ calls for wealthy nations to not only fund climate-adaptation projects, but also compensate developing countries for the loss and damage already inflicted. The issue is expected to be a major flashpoint at COP27 in Egypt in November.
“When islands are submerged on coastlines, people can’t adapt to that,” Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist and the founder of the Africa-based Rise Up Movement, said in an interview with The New York Times at Climate Week NYC. “In the Horn of Africa, in areas like Karamoja in Uganda, people can’t adapt to starvation.”
A youth climate strike on Friday is expected to feature speakers calling on governments to fund loss and damage in poorer countries.
Meanwhile, Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis because Russian President Vladimir Putin has scaled back natural-gas supplies to retaliate against Western sanctions. That has sent energy prices soaring, with Goldman Sachs warning that a typical family in Europe could face energy bills of nearly $500 a month by early next year unless the bloc introduces price caps.
Meanwhile, major oil corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell are making blockbuster profits and rewarding shareholders through stock buybacks. In the second quarter alone, the industry raked in a record $50 billion. The International Energy Agency in June estimated that, worldwide, the industry would earn a record $4 trillion in 2022 — up from recent annual averages of $1.5 trillion.
These trends prompted UN Secretary-General António Guterres this week to call for a “windfall profit” tax on fossil-fuel companies, which he said are “feasting on hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and windfall profits while household budgets shrink and our planet burns.”
A windfall tax is a one-time levy on a company or industry during times of large and unexpected profits. The policy is popular among progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York. They introduced legislation that would apply to every large US corporation, not just those in oil and gas, though it hasn’t gained broad support. Europe is considering its own version of the law.