$209bn a year is what fossil fuel firms owe in climate reparations. We want that paid
T he truth is out, and it lays bare big oil’s plunder of the environment for commercial greed. Academics now estimate that the 21 top fossil fuel behemoths are liable for an estimated US$209bn annual reparation bill arising from their exploitation.
But what’s more scandalous is that the governments and private investors that have set off an existential timebomb may not be held accountable, despite compelling evidence that they were complicit in the turbocharged, steroidal race for industrial expansion and dominance.
For centuries now, Caribbeans of African descent have seen their demands for reparations arising from transatlantic chattel slavery blunted by former European colonial states on the basis that too much time has passed to establish social justice. However, that claim cannot be advanced in the face of an unfolding climate change apocalypse.
Earlier this week, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, visited Jamaica and rehashed his lament that developed states had failed to fulfil their pledge of $100bn in climate mitigation financing. But the fact that he took that same line in 2022 and 2021 is proof, to us, of the impotence of his secretary generalship. That places the burden on vulnerable developing states to lobby more vigorously as a bloc.
In conversation with me this week, Johnny Briceño, the prime minister of Belize, insisted that that major fossil fuel producers “have a moral and legal responsibility to the rest of countries suffering from climate change”, citing sea-level rise, more frequent and destructive hurricanes, warming waters and eroding coastlines as clear evidence of the dire consequences.
The effects across the Caribbean are clear and irrefutable. The climate emergency is not
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