“PAY UP OR SHUT UP” – “TRILLIONS NOT BILLIONS” – “Global North, PAY UP!” These are some of the signs being held up by climate activists in a photograph taken at the recently concluded COP29 conference in Baku. Perhaps the women holding the “Pay up or shut up” sign are unaware of how many citizens of the Global North wish their governments would take the second option. More probably these activists are well aware that, whatever the citizens of those countries might want, said governments are committed to taking “climate action” and are positively addicted to talking about taking climate action. The link takes you to a Guardian article that continues,
It was only on the last scheduled day of two weeks of negotiations at the UN Cop29 climate summit that developed countries put a financial commitment on the table for the first time.
In reality, this offer took not just two weeks of talks to prepare, but nine years – since article 9 of the Paris agreement in 2015 made it clear that the rich industrialised world would be obliged to supply cash to developing countries to help them tackle the climate crisis.
When it finally arrived on Friday, the initial offer of $250bn (£200bn) a year by 2035 was widely derided as too low. Early the following morning, the countries upped the figure to $300bn, which ended up being accepted, albeit amid acrimony and cries of “betrayal”.
The Telegraph‘s account says,
Cop29 ground out a last-minute compromise deal on Saturday night that offers at least $300 billion (£240 billion) per year by 2035 to help poorer countries confront global warming and allows China’s contributions to remain voluntary.
The sum demanded by the less wealthy nations had been much more following two weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea capital of Baku.
Mukhtar Babayev, the Cop29 president, declared open the final summit plenary after midnight on Saturday, two days after the conference was officially scheduled to end.
A final text was released following several sleepless nights for negotiators, with tensions boiling over as small island states and the world’s poorest countries walked out of one meeting.
A last-minute deal in extra time! Who could have guessed that would happen? Answer: anyone who remembered COP28 in 2023, COP27 in 2022, COP26 in 2021… but I did not come here entirely to recycle my post from this time last year (though I thought the title was amusing), but to point out that rich countries explicitly paying poor countries “to tackle the climate crisis” may have unexpected consequences.
Here is how Wikipedia describes Jizya:
Jizya (Arabic: جِزْيَة, romanized: jizya), or jizyah, is a type of taxation historically levied on non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law
Modern writing about jizya as levied in the Ottoman Empire, for instance, tends to emphasize that, for the times, it represented a relatively good deal for adherents of minority religions. It gave those who paid it definite legal status as protected persons. Other descriptions of jizya are less palatable to the modern reader: many Muslim authorities saw the jizya “as a symbol of humiliation to remind dhimmis of their status as a conquered people and their subjection to Islamic laws” and, above all, as an incentive to convert to Islam.
Only it didn’t always work out that way. Robert Hoyland’s book In God’s Path tells of a pious governor of Khurasan called Ashras ibn ‘Abdallah who sent a missionary to bring the dhimmis under his rule to Islam:
…the man they hired preached in the environs of Samarkand, declaring that those who became Muslim would be freed of the poll tax, “and the people flocked to him.” . . . When Ashras realized that a consequence of his policy was a sharp drop in tax revenues, he ordered: “Take the tax from whomever you used to take it from,” and so they reimposed the poll tax on those who had become Muslim, prompting many to apostatize.
Later Islamic rulers learnt from this and similar episodes that they could avoid the trouble such a sharp reversal of policy caused and keep their jizya revenue flowing by quietly discouraging dhimmis from conversion, while, of course, loudly proclaiming how utterly vital it was that they should convert.
A similar process is well underway in HMP’s where the obvious benefits to life and limb of meekly converting to Islam will soon lead to a critical shortage of defenceless dhimmis. Perhaps TTK has recognised this hence his anxiety to incarcerate the likes of the unfortunate Peter Lynch.
a symbol of humiliation to remind dhimmis of their status as a conquered people
When the Normans conquered England, the conquered natives were also similarly taxed to supply funds to the conquorers. It’s standard conquered-people-oppression, crunsh them and squeeze them for everything they’ve got.
Complaining about Islamic law can get a person sent to prison, for years, in the United Kingdom – so best I leave that part of the post alone.
As for the “Climate Crises” money to various other countries – the British government policy is insane, and, hopefully, this is one bit of government spending that President Trump will end as regards American payments – and end American participation in these international “governance” bodies (which were thought up decades before the C02 is evil theory was pushed – in short the “solution” came BEFORE the “problem”).
The “non government organisations” NGOs – mostly they turn out to be tax payer funded (rather like the “Catholic Charities” in the United States – who turn out to be mainly taxpayer funded, run by Marxist atheists, and largely concerned with maximising illegal immigration into the United States in the hope of “Cloward and Piven” style welfare and election fraud destruction of the United States).
It is no surprise that no matter how much money the British government spends, and no matter how high energy prices are pushed for British industry (in order to destroy British industry and have everything made in the People’s Republic of China – for some reason C02 produced by China is NOT evil, only Western C02 is evil) the taxpayer funded “Non Government Organisations”, cheered on by Stalin’s “Guardian” newspaper, scream for even more spending and even more regulations.
Is the deliberate intent of the British government and the “NG0s” to destroy the United Kingdom?
That would be very hard to prove – without “making windows into the souls of men”, but it is clearly true that their policies will destroy the United Kingdom – whether that is their deliberate intent or not.
I’ve a bit of a history of trying to dig people out of the shit they’ve got themselves in. A by-product of knowing the sort of people who get themselves into shit.
There’s been very few successes. Dysfunctional people are dysfunctional people. If you can cure the dysfunctional part they don’t need any help. And if you can’t, no help will ever help them. Because whatever you do for them doesn’t stay done.
A quote from Bloke In Spain over at Tim Worstall’s blog on a post about government schemes to attempt to help out homeless people. My thought here is, that the same thing applies to dysfunctional countries. No matter how much money is thrown at them they never change. Here they are at the umpteenth climate junket, once more with the begging bowl in hand. This time wanting money to solve a non existent problem.
By the time they get to COP50 and climate change still hasn’t happened, and the Maldives still refuse to sink beneath the waves, does anyone think they will stop? Me neither.
Stony
Homeless people
Dysfunctional countries
The NHS
and many more examples
Amusing history lesson, but it’s application to the present day is curious… Since the only way to avoid the eco-jizya is to be poor or China, the implication is that it would do us no good to try either technique to avoid the tax.
In return the leaders of developing countries have promised to only buy electric versions of Mercedes-Benz in the future.
It’s just grift. It is white guilt. We should be Gaza and spiritual and all that. Why d’ya think The Guardian is obsessed with tales of displaced Gazan artists and poets? Never Gazan engineers? Well, poets and artists rely on government grants*. Obviously not their own government. Hamas are just embezzling cunts who have managed to turn manufactured poverty into an art. And of course the Gazan engineers are all busy building an underground system bigger than London or Paris or being Poundland Elon Musks. And are we seriously going to bung places like Nigeria a squillion quid? Seriously? Just so some despots can have gold toilets to defecate on the proles (theirs and ours) because we no longer eat shit in the trees?
*Prostitutes are more honest. They rely on Hugh Grant. Yes, an oldie.
KJP,
Very succinct. And the batteries will be made in China with metals mined in Africa in sub-Dickensian circumstances and we shall all feel good because it is technically carbon neutral and we shall sleep soundly because of that thought – even after a Fairtrade latte.
Not one post (so far) on Trump and American politics. I call that progress.
So, it would be intrusive and impolite to mention one of the reasons why negotiations are faltering? Why this scheme might now hit a brick wall?
Too funny. 😉
Calm down, bobby b. It’s just business, nothing personal.
Well, if you don’t like it, IO, y’all should just start your own Samizdata over in Europe.
Oh, wait . . . .
😉
and allows China’s contributions to remain voluntary.
Of course. After all they are both the biggest economy and the biggest actual polluter.
A final text was released following several sleepless nights for negotiators, with tensions boiling over as small island states and the world’s poorest countries walked out of one meeting.
This reminded me of when I was in college and the NUS (national union of students) went of strike, and nobody noticed. Who cares if the beggars get so pissed that they take their begging bowls home?
Johnk – I was just watching a debate in the House of Commons (before I turned it off in disgust) and they blamed recent heavy rain on “Climate Change” and “The Climate Emergency” – which, according to them, is caused by British (but not Chinese) C02 emissions – which means, according to them, the closure of British car and van factories (whilst they pretend to care about the workers, their families, and the local communities), caused by insane taxes and regulations – and sky high energy costs, is justified.
That is their level of “science” – it is raining so it must be the fault of C02, specifically British C02 (which is about 1% of the world total).
How can I advice younger people to stay in this country? How can I seriously suggest that other people invest here? When the ruling establishment (including officials, JUDGES, and “scientific experts”) is as it is?
British CO2 which is half of what it was 30 years ago.
jgh – indeed.
Which means if British (not Chinese or any other) C02 is the only thing that drives the weather (which they call the “climate” even though that is a different thing) then clearly the “extreme weather events” which they falsely claim are getting more common, are caused by too LITTLE C02 – as, according to the establishment, the weather was better (less “extreme events”) when Britain produced more C02.
And do not forget “Climate Scientists” – no scientist (say Nobel Prize winning scientists) is allowed to oppose the C02 is evil theory – unless they are a “Climate Scientist” and to become a “Climate Scientist” one must accept the C02 is evil theory. The establishment have created a circular “argument”.
The actual amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has steadily risen from about 300 parts per million in pre-industrial times to around 450 ppm now. It needs to be borne in mind that below 200 ppm all the plants would die and pretty much all life soon afterwards. There is a cycle by which CO2 is added to and subtracted from the atmosphere all the time and in pretty huge quantities. Human activities add around 3% to the plus side of this equation so, all other things being equal, human activity would cause levels to rise. Are all other things equal? It is not possible to know, it is highly likely that CO2 levels are rising completely naturally as are temperatures. Climate scientists made calculations to predict how temperatures would rise if the theory that additional CO2 in the atmosphere caused such rises was correct. As temperatures failed to rise as predicted, the theory has been falsified. If they were actually scientists that would have been the end of it, consigned to history along with Lamarkism and Phlogiston.