The first is from Ronald Bailey, at Reason, in a dispatch from Bali:
Without going into the details, the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework (GDR) proposal foresees levying the equivalent of a climate "consumption luxury tax" on every person who earns over a "development threshold" of $9,000 per year. The idea is that rich people got rich in part by dumping carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, leaving less space for poor people to dump their emissions. In one scenario, Americans would pay the equivalent of a $780 per person luxury tax annually, which amounts to sending $212 billion per year in climate reparations to poor countries to aid their development and help them adapt to climate change. In this scenario, the total climate reparations that the rich must transfer annually is over $600 billion. This contrasts with a new report commissioned by the U.N. Development Program that only demands $86 billion per year to avoid "adaptation apartheid."
The second link comes via Tom Nelson, and is from Emma Brindal, "Climate Justice Campaign Coordinator" for Friends of the Earth Australia.
A common theme was that the “solutions” to climate change that are being posed by many governments, such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and biofuels are false and are not rooted in justice. Another point was that as this current ecomonic system got us here in the first place, a climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.
I would love to put Emma Brindal on stage and ask her even for a simplified explanation of a good median forecast for climate sensitivity and why. I’d bet a million dollars she would flounder in any debate on the science. Because it is not about the science. Its about Ms. Brindal’s long-standing desire to attack freedom and capitalism, and climate catastrophism being a convinient vehicle, at the moment, to reach that goal.
Unbelievable. What makes these idiots think billions of dollars of more aid is going to help build economies when it has so completely failed in Africa?
As you note, its not about building up those economies, its about tearing down the rich, with the excuse being utterly transparent.
I also don’t see how the justice argument survives the negative relationship between wealth and environmental damage beyond some middle income hump. Very wealthy countries are wealthy enough to divert surplus to looking after the environment. Given that relationship, these taxes can conceivably shift wealth economies back up towards peak environmental damage.
You cannot blame them for believing this stuff. It is what they are taught from the earliest ages in government schools and in universities. Their minds are saturated with these ideas–they have no defense against teachers, professors, and the media when hit so young. They are the future of the western world, and we have paid for their indoctrination.
That is why it is called “academic lobotomy.”
Just as I thought, another full-blown communist-controlled hoax…a way for the communists to control without open warfare
Who would administer these funds? The UN? HA! Do you REALLY think that the redistribution of funds means that money would go to the poor?