COP26: Rich countries ‘pushing back’ on paying for climate loss
This basic aspect has always been true. This was the stumbling block for George H.W. Bush. He fully accepted that *something* had to be done, but felt that the US was being asked to bear too much burden.
Looking at per capita emissions, lifetime historical emissions by county, who caused the damage versus who suffers the damage and almost everything I can think of, the weight of the moral argument is with the poor countries.
But set that aside for a second. Let's say we don't care about morality and ethics, we just want to do the practical thing. Paying for solutions that keep people in their birth countries and that limit the climate refugee problem, ultimately makes our border security a much simpler problem. Those solutions are probably cheaper in the long run than creating a Fortress America and Fortress Europe to keep all those people out.
And then there's the thing that rarely gets talked about. Many geo-engineering solutions are cheap, but rather dangerous. As a poor country faces existential threat, it will not be that expensive for that country to just launch a Hail Mary and dump copper sulfate into the ocean or some such thing in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, consequences on other nations be damned.
What goes around comes around eventually. I think we're more secure when they are more secure.
