Climate Reparations. Really?
Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager
Climate Reparations. Really?
< sigh >
From Oxford Dictionary:
● Reparation – noun
1) the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.
2) the compensation for war damage paid by a defeated state.
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“In November 2022, the United Nations resolved that Russia should pay reparations for the losses, damages and injuries caused by its invasion of Ukraine.
Now, some scientists say those payments should include compensation for climate damage, too.
The first two years of the war have produced at least 175 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new report by
● the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War,
●》a network of scientists investigating the climate impacts of Russia’s war.《●
That’s the equivalent of about $32 billion in damages, they say.
Their calculation uses a figure known as the social cost of carbon, a metric designed to estimate the economic costs of greenhouse gas emissions.
A recent study put that cost at around $185 per ton of CO2, which is the figure the new report used.
… “The Russian Federation can be held accountable for these emissions and the resulting damage to the global climate as, without its act of aggression, these [greenhouse gas] emissions would not have happened,” the report says.
… Climate damage itself also isn’t specific to Ukraine — greenhouse gas emissions affect the entire planet when they go into the atmosphere.
That complicates the question of who should benefit from any potential climate reparations.”
