Pakistan flooding highlights climate racism
Facts
- Pakistan's minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, stated on Sun. that rich countries should pay reparations for their role in causing climate disasters faced by poorer nations.
- In an interview, Rehman suggested, "There is so much loss and damage with so little reparations to countries that contributed so little to the world's carbon footprint that obviously the bargain made between the global north and global south is not working."
- Pakistan is currently enduring extreme flooding after enduring both record-breaking monsoon rainfall as well as severe glacial melt in the country's northern mountains.
- The floods have affected at least 33M people. 90% of crops in the Sindh district (producer of half of Pakistan's food) have been ruined, with 200 bridges and 3,000 miles of telecom lines collapsed or damaged and nearly 1,300 killed so far.
- The cost of the floods - which have destroyed over 700,000 homes - has been estimated at around $10B, nearly 4% of Pakistan's GDP. The UN has made an emergency appeal to the global north for $160M to relieve the immediate toll on the country and its people; the US has pledged $30M, the UK around $17.3M, and Canada roughly $3.8M.
- According to the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index, Pakistan is one of the top 10 nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, despite only producing less than 1% of global greenhouse emissions.
Spin
Left narrative
A third of Pakistan has been submerged by torrential floods, and 33M people are displaced due to the actions of the industrialized world. The global north has so far ignored the humanitarian crises from climate change because of its apathy toward poorer nations like Pakistan. This climate colonialism cannot be allowed to continue, and rich countries must be held accountable for their destruction of the environment.
Right narrative
Committing to climate reparations could see nations like the US on the hook for billions of dollars for decades or even centuries. People need to stop attempting to guilt rich nations into paying outrageous amounts to countries that have failed to adapt and invest in their infrastructure. The US, and its people, are facing enough of their economic challenges without paying unjustified reparations or taking on so-called "climate refugees".
Nerd narrative
There's an 85% chance there will be at least 2˚C degrees of global warming by 2100, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
