Combating climate change costs money

Forget the unfair system of carbon credits. Poorer countries need financial help to the annual tune of $200bn
Andy Atkins
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009 13.30 BST

The world's major economies – and also the world's largest polluters – met in London this week. Some of these countries of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) are long-term, hardcore fossil fuel addicts – rich countries including the US, UK and the rest of Europe – while developing countries are only just getting a taste for high-carbon development. Gordon Brown is right that world leaders must engage seriously in securing a strong and fair agreement and that action must be taken now. The question, of course, is how.
It is clear what needs to happen to get things moving again. The main sticking point is cash. The rich countries of the MEF have already accepted they must provide money to enable developing countries to grow cleanly and adapt to the effects of climate change already putting millions of lives at risk. It's time for them to stop shirking their responsibility to do so and put real money on the table – at least $200bn annually – to show we're serious about enabling the massive transformation to the clean future we'll be in deep trouble without.
So far, the government has pushed for much of this money to be supplied by a global market in carbon credits – yet this will allow rich countries to offload the burden of cutting carbon emissions on to the world's poorest while generating huge profits for banks, investment funds and financiers piling into a "climate cash cow".
At the same time, rich countries have been pushing for these funds to be managed by the World Bank – an institution that they control, as well as the largest multilateral lender for fossil fuel projects in the world. Developing countries are right not to trust that this will deliver finance fairly. Providing this money through a UN framework is the only fair and transparent way to ensure this money makes a real difference on the ground.
The MEF countries must take responsibility for the fact that they have caused climate change, and lead in cutting their emissions first and fast, by at least 40% by 2020 – and without carbon offsetting, a con that just means avoiding taking real action through dodgy accounting.
It's now only a matter of weeks before the UN talks in Copenhagen begin. The price to pay for failure to the world's poorest people is vast and growing daily. The cost to the culprits for climate change, the world's richest, is not. Money talks – and right now cold, hard cash will go further than anything else to get us the strong and fair agreement we need.
As part of Friends of the Earth's Demand Climate Change campaign, it is asking everyone to sign its international petition to world leaders for a strong and fair climate deal at www.demandclimatechange.org.