In my column in today’s Spectator I‘ve sketched out the argument Boris could have made when he was asked by the New York Times at Cop27 whether Britain should pay reparations to developing countries, given that the argument he did make wasn’t particularly good.
Yes, he acknowledged at Cop27, Britain was the first country to industrialise and, as a result, “people in the UK have put an awful lot of carbon into the atmosphere”. But we simply don’t have the financial re-sources to pay compensation for all the harm caused by the industrial revolution.
I can think of several better responses. For instance, he could have questioned the link between extreme weather events – such as the flooding in Pakistan, earlier this year – and carbon emissions. As David Craig pointed out on this site, more people died in floods in Pakistan in 1950 (2,900) and 1965 (10,000) than they did in 2022 (just over 1,500). In 2011, a group of geophysicists looked at the data on extreme floods going back to 1891 and concluded they were less intense in recent years.
Another argument he could have made is that even if you accept that there’s a link between carbon emissions and, say, rising sea levels, it doesn’t follow that the U.K. should pay compensation to the developing world. After all, China is a developing country and China has emitted more carbon dioxide in the past eight years (80 billion tonnes) than Britain did between 1750 and 2020 (78 billion) – that’s according to Our World in Data.
But the most disappointing thing about his response is that he didn’t bang the drum for capitalism and the free enterprise system. As Boris argued in 2018, the economic model pioneered by Britain in the middle of the 18th century has lifted billions out of poverty. In 1970, almost 27 per cent of people worldwide lived in absolute poverty. In 2006, that number had fallen to a little over 5 per cent. The UN estimates more poverty was reduced in the past 50 years than in the previous 500, thanks to the industrial revolution – and the main beneficiaries have been people in the developing world. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of the population in developing countries living in poverty fell from 43 per cent to 21 per cent.
In light of this, the notion that Britain should pay a financial penalty to the developing world for being the first country to industrialise is completely absurd. It’s a bit like arguing that because a British citizen created the world’s first successful vaccine, we should pay compensation to all those people who have suffered vaccine injuries, overlooking the fact that without vaccines hundreds of millions would have died from tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio, tetanus and hepatitis B.
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There is no link between a trace chemical, 95% emitted by Gaia, which is used to make oxgyen and anything, except plant growth…..There is no general sea level rise and if there was, it has nothing do with plant food.
This is a de facto tax on modern nations who are being forced to de-industrialise. These nations are far cleaner than non-industrial nations. For the record fossil fuels is a lie. It is abiotic self regenerating and we have hundreds of years or more of supply. Dropping horse shit in your streets causes disease like typhus and diptheria. Cars are far cleaner than horses, there is nothing wrong with the combustion engine or oil – unless you are a retard who does not want the freedom of personal travel. Which is what the elite at the Climate shakedown want for you (but not for them).
Ignoring the need for incontrovertible evidence, which doesn’t exist, surely any consideration of harm caused must be balanced against benefit produced by the industrial revolution and the creation of a modern world.
It is Socialism. Dogma not evidence.
Isn’t it the new religion? With modern ‘evidence’ akin to rising from the dead and virgin births?
Well we can pay reparations to developing countries and they can pay reparations to the rich world to compensate for all the trouble caused by illegal economic migrants – and we can call it even.
I’m looking forward to Pakistan paying reparations to the thousands of young British girls who were systematically gang-raped by Pakistani men who had transferred to the UK.
My case against reparations is that they are being signed off by a slick (although poor Despatch box performer) career politician who was installed against the majority will, and who has personally bankrupted the nation. Or at least we are bankrupt when we request extra funding for social care or children’s catch-up programmes.
To fling at the Nairobi railway project, or China, or Ukraine, however and the money rains down with abandon and we are given the bill; and the Markets slumber on approvingly.
Nobody thinks this has legs. Boris Johnson says he doesn’t think the UK should pay reparations. Sunak has ruled it out.
Why are we still talking about this?
It’s a stupid idea, and it’s been ruled out, there is no reason to continue talking about it.
The DS isn’t going down the click bait route is it?
Those are fair points but I think it’s worth talking about because even though the idea has for now been rejected at least by the UK, it was considered worth talking about so it’s probably something that TPTB would like to do at some point.
I hadn’t realised he ruled it out! Must read things more carefully.
The only link between rising carbon dioxide and rising anything else is on the failed computer models of people with lucrative grants to find opaque and nebulous environmental catastrophes. And the reason we are hearing increased shrieking from the usual bourgeoise suspects is that they are fast running out of material.
The Earth has warmed barely 1 degree since 1860, there has been no statistically significant warming since 1998 and even that stopped 8 years ago, the Great Barrier Reef is in rude health, Polar Bears are thriving, sea levels are still rising around 3mm a year, the Arctic is still here and growing, the Maldives are building 15 brand new underwater airports across their underwater islands and children know what snow is.
Annually we spend the combined GDP of UK and France on stopping 0.001% of a trace gas plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive, with a pledge to spend a further $275 trillion. That’s $34,500 for every human being on this planet. #climatescam #wealthtransfer #don’tbelievethehype #Co2isnotpollution
That’s what would be on my UK wide billboard ad and TV campaign anyway if I had the money. Although I’m suspect it would be crushed at the first gate by OfCon..
“I suspect it would be crushed at the first gate by OfCon..”
And you would be up on a charge of promoting “hate speech.”
“It’s a bit like arguing that because a British citizen created the world’s first successful vaccine, we should pay compensation to all those people who have suffered vaccine injuries, overlooking the fact that without vaccines hundreds of millions would have died from tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio, tetanus and hepatitis B.”
Toby was ambling along quite nicely until he ended with this dubious interpretation of the alleged merits of “vaccines.”
Actually, seeking to refute Bozo’s comments is simply falling in to their trap. Play them at their own game:
Prove ie categorically prove that CO2 or Carbon, and make your mind up which Bozo, has resulted in:
Holes in the ozone
An imminent ice age
Global warming
Climate change.
Bozo can choose whichever flavour he is happiest with. At least then we will be on firm (
) ground.
As someone said, we should seek huge reparations from those who invented the wheel. Without wheels, none of this would have happened.
Wheels enabled colonialism! The American natives didn’t have any!
Jason Hickel would beg to differ of course:
https://www.jasonhickel.org/research
How would you respond to him?
Jason appears to have picked a point in time, perhaps somewhere mid 12th century, where, if we were to return to it, everything in some debatable scale of merit would be ensure that world and people would be in perfect balance.
I was born in 1960. Since then the population of the Earth has doubled. We feed all the extra people amply, and everyone is much richer and lives longer. Indeed in the last 20 years economic development has lifted more than a 1bn people out of absolute poverty. I think we ought to ask more questions about where the doomsters had the ‘tipping point’ in 1960. I suspect much fewer than where we are now, and yet we have not collapsed, or fried, or starved to death. None of these models and hypotheses seem to take into account the endless inventiveness, creativity, and resourcefulness of mankind to change and adapt.
I think Hickel’s argument is similar to Sylvia Federici’s, namely that there was a period between the collapse of feudalism and the rise of capitalism, let’s call it post-feudalism, between the 14th and 15th centuries or so, where genuine and holistic progress was being made, but then capitalism came along and was actually a *regress* for several centuries. And it wasn’t until the labor movement in the late 19th century and into the 20th century than things really began to improve for the working class. And for the Global South, the pre-colonial poverty numbers were exaggerated and dubious, while colonization made things worse, and it wasn’t until decolonization that things began to improve for them.
There aren’t any pre-colonial poverty numbers because stone age cultures generally don’t keep records.
India wasn’t stone age before colonization though. They even had indoor plumbing centuries before Europe did.
The Romans had indoor plumbing and India was never really colonized[*], only conquered. Until 1947, it was composed of a set of autonomous Indian principalities under overlordship of an English emperor (earlier, by the British East India Company).
[*] Colonization means establishing settlements in distant countries (originally, Greek city states founding sister cities settled by so-called colonists around the Mediterranian).
Industrial Revolution made poor countries richer
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Since Climagheddon will strike future generations, how can we pay reparations for something that has not and may never happen?
Reparations (or tributes) is something a party which lost a war has to pay to the party which won it. The term became morally overloaded with the end of world war one when the people who weren’t willing to make peace until total victory dreamed up the interesting idea that war ought to be regarded as crime and hence, someone found guilty of this crime deserves to be punished for it (by demanding insane amounts of reparations various German states incrementally paid from about 1920 to 2010), all while they liberally kept making war all over the world themselves (Great Britain, France and the USA mostly).
That’s another useful term the woketards like to claim for themselves because its somehow associated with historic guilt (or assumed historic guilt). Hence, it would be a very good idea to deny them the use of it: Nobody in Britain owes anybody in Pakistan (or even China) anything just because the first effective steam engine happened to be invented by a Scotsman. If Watt hadn’t done it (and – more importantly – hadn’t gotten a patent on it), then, somebody else would have done it.
“without vaccines hundreds of millions would have died from tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio, tetanus and hepatitis B.”
You sure about that? Just reading Turtles all the way Down” It’s changing my opinion somewhat.
Industrialisation also brought prosperity to the world. It brought better health and longer lifespans,, it freed people from dying young of preventable disease, and from a short life of back breaking labour, so if we deduct all of that from the claim for reparations then perhaps the UK and the rent seekers are just about even.
The main argument against is that the Prime Minister might also consider presenting Third World nations with a bill for our share in the West’s development of all modern industrial processes, electricity and electronics, computers and the internet, air travel, railways and modern road transport, and of course modern medicine. Reparations work both ways.
The problem that we have suffered as a result is that boris’s mind has been taken over by his partner and now wife who has turned what we voted for as a believer in individual freedoms and free speech into a wimpish slave to net zero and globalisation. The original Boris I believe would have fought stronger against restrictions and lockdowns which have cost our country dear in deaths and finantial ruin during his period in power. Not the partygate irrelevance but the restrictions and failed result of them was the reason he had to go and Sunak who is now our prime minister was also guilty of these as chancellor, so should accept his responsibilty for the reasons our finances are in such a seriously bad state rather than blaming everbody else. The members of the Tory party who voted against Sunak have more of his measure and those who have resigned from it have made their opinion clear. It seems the majority of Tory MP’s are completely out of touch with the opinion of the country and those who are not, do not have the guts to do anything about it. Sunak has been put in place completely undemocratically and will not survive any democratic vote, which now cannot come soon enough – two years is too long to wait to kick him out. The Tory party has no conservative values left and obviously no longer believes in democracy, UK union, personal freedoms, or any of the other values I used to vote for.
For these politicians to continue a policy derived at the UN and WEF that effectively will completely change our society and will most likely result in a huge decline in living standards impoverishing billions of people around the earth, they must, at the very least, hold a referendum and ask the people. They do not have any right to arbitrarily do this. They must also present the true costs and real implications for people’s and their families.
If we are going to have a conference talking about reparations how about having one charging America and China for their joint development and distribution of the Corona virus. That is a far more valid claim than anything to do with the developments the UK has responsibility for which on balance have increased prosperity and longer life expectancy throughout the world.