Climate Selfishness, Yay

The following quote is attributed to various influential figures: "There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse." It's an odd turn of phrase that might have come from Churchill, or Reagan or Palmerston - we don't know - and while it's undoubtedly a poetic ode to equine majesty, I can't help hearing an innuendo that makes the stomach turn.

Whoever said it, though, everyone seems to agree that the quote precedes the internet and is (somehow!) worth perpetuating on it. I like it as a microcosm for internet ideas - they can always be looked at from varying angles (or outright misinterpreted), it's often impossible to figure out who started them, and you'll never understand who's keeping them going, or why.

One internet idea I find particularly annoying is that history can be accounted for - that we can pull out a giant ledger of virtues, vices, good deeds and crimes, and settle every injustice via a series of payments from rich countries to poor ones. Global wealth redistribution is a good idea - any world where some die of starvation while others die of obesity has to get better - I just don't think there should be blame attached.

Take the climate crisis. Britain industrialised first, and by Palmerston's time, she was annihilating her coal to manufacture at speeds nobody had dreamed possible. When Churchill came to power, British manufacturing had been eclipsed by the largest fossil fuel burner in history - the United States. And by Reagan's time, today's largest carbon emitter - China - was seeding its ascendancy. Who's to blame? Did Britain start it? Did America perpetuate it? Is China keeping the problem going? It's not so simple.

Britain didn't burn coal only to make things out of homegrown wool for itself, there was a global trade network attached. Supplies were bought from many countries and goods were sold back, and the same is true for the United States and China. Answer this - if China burns Australian coal to make American iPhones that are shipped to Swedish customers on Greek container ships that are serviced in Kenyan shipyards, then who owes the world the balancing payment for the carbon emissions?

Call me a socialist, but once you consider all of the world's transactions, the answer has to be basically everyone - we're all part of the problem. I don't mean equally. If you're making lots of money from energy-intensive Bitcoin, you're causing more climate damage than me. And I cause more than most by living in a country with all of modernity's energy-consuming comforts (not to mention cold, dark winters that require heating and lighting).

And, yes, rich countries should pay more to fix the problem. Not because they burned the most fossils or made the most money from the last two centuries of carbon-fuelled economic growth, but because the world is round, we're all stuck on it, and some shoulders can bear a larger burden.

I'm writing from Fairytale Land, of course. The recent fiasco at COP29 underlined how unlikely a political solution is. A twenty-ninth joint statement with watered-down wording is one thing - specifically, it's a joint statement with watered-down wording - and I'll bet my reputation (and, honestly, everyone's lives) that such things will never lead to a viable path away from climate catastrophe.

What might work is technological solutions to clean energy. And I realise that this article must seem horribly left-leaning for an author who claims non-alignment, so allow me to step to the political right and become horribly nationalistic. Most rich countries are resource-poor and have to get much of their energy from foreign fossil fuels, yet many have good potential in clean energy. Western Europe, for instance, is split between a wind-swept north and a sun-baked south. Wouldn't it be in its countries' national interests to invest heavily in domestic clean energy, if only to free themselves from foreign imports?

I know there are risks and hurdles. Wind doesn't always blow, materials are hard to come by (and not always "clean" themselves), and batteries are difficult to recycle. However, big investments in clean energy could improve those issues. I think some governments ought to make those investments in their selfish national interest - i.e. unilaterally, without needing the international community to magic up a workable agreement first.

Or, we can wait until COP147... and people can wonder what horses used to look like.

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