So now it is a year later, and there’s another climate change conference, and African leaders are furious agai because there were plenty of promises made this week, but no commitments.
Africans claim that they are entitled to money because they are the victims of climate change. That is, the West has caused the climate change, and the Africans are suffering because of it. Augustine Njamshi from the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) says:In general, Africa has not gotten what it wanted at this Cop23. Because the discussions that matter to us, things that matter to us have been relegated to the background and all that we’re hearing is what the developed countries want, and that is not in the interest of Africa.
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Africa has not contributed to this [climate change] problem, yet it’s bearing the consequences in a great way, in a massive way and we don’t have the luxury to adapt to the climate change consequences, as well as we don’t even have the means to do any mitigation.
Actually, Africa has benefited enormously from carbon emissions. At the beginning of this article, there is a picture of Kinshasa, the capital city of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). You can see the skyscrapers, apartment buildings, roads, cars, and other infrastructure made possible by research and manufacturing performed by the West. If it had not been for the West’s CO2 emissions, the people of Kinshasa would still be living in thatch huts and driving around in carts pulled by donkeys and camels. Africa is as responsible as anyone else is for carbon emissions because of the enormous benefits they get.
And what would happen if a huge pot of money were given to Joseph Kabila, the president of DRC, to mitigate climate change? Where would that money go? Anyone who knows anything about what is going on in Africa knows the answer. Kabila would use the money to provide support and weapons to government militias slaughtering, raping, and mutilating thousands of people in Kasai province, where 3.9 million people have already been forced to flee their homes.
I have been writing about climate change conferences for years, and it is always been clear that they have nothing to do with mitigating any climate problems. They have only one objective: To force the United States and other western countries to pay billions of dollars to leaders of "underdeveloped" countries, so that those leaders can use the money to pay their cronies, pad their bank accounts, and buy weapons to kill their enemies. I am not aware of any proposal coming out of a climate change conference that would actually reduce carbon emissions. And the examples of Germany and Norway described above illustrate this.
However, the conference did produce some good news for African leaders. According to Chinese state media:
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