Russ Vernon-Jones

love, justice, and climate change … I know you can make a difference.

Debt cancellation

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Worst Debt Crisis in History

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One of the major obstacles to solving the global climate crisis is the extreme debt crisis in much of the Global South. Just when the whole world needs nations in the Global South to participate in addressing the climate crisis, many of these nations are hobbled by impossibly high levels of debt.

The Pope’s message to a recent debt crisis meeting was reportedly, “The world’s poorest countries are being crushed by unmanageable debt and richer nations need to do more to help.”

This is more than a debt and climate crisis, of course. This is a crisis in health, education, and basic living standards, too. Across 144 developing countries, debt service is absorbing an average of 41.5% of government revenues. In the first quarter of this year in Nigeria, servicing the national debt consumed 74% of all federal government revenue. How can any nation function under such circumstances?

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Who is benefiting: Neo-colonialism and climate finance

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It has recently been reported that in 2022 the wealthy nations finally met their commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance to the nations of the Global South. This might appear to be cause for celebration, but there is a not-so-pretty side to this story as well.

In 2009 the wealthy countries agreed that by 2020 they would provide the less wealthy nations with $100 billion per year to support climate action. That goal was reaffirmed in the Paris agreement in 2015. There are two major reasons for this aid to go from the wealthy Global North nations to the lower-income Global South nations.
1. The climate crisis has primarily been caused by the emissions of the wealthy nations while the major burden of its effects have been borne by the lower-income nations. This aid is essentially payment for having harmed the Global South nations. It is a debt owed by the Global North nations. (The wealthy nations have never agreed to put this rationale in writing, but the moral obligation is clear.)
2. Humanity will not be able to solve the climate crisis unless….

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Extreme Heat, Possibilities, and a Recent Action

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At the beginning of April, I wrote about record-breaking heat in Rio de Janeiro and in Africa. This week the news is about an intense heat wave in south and east Asia. The temperature in Bangkok, Thailand was over 104°F. Bangladesh has had 23 “heat-wave days” in April, with temperatures surpassing 108°F (42°C0 in some areas. The heat forced schools for 33 million children to close. Schools in India and the Philippines have also been closed because of extreme heat. In Myanmar the temperature reached 113°F.

I find these temperatures mind-boggling. It’s hard to imagine people carrying on their lives.

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Canceling the Debts of Global South Nations: A Necessary Part of the Worldwide Climate Effort – Part 2

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Actually, it is the Global North (GN) that should be repaying the Global South (GS). The countries of the GN have been stealing resources from the GS, or taking them while only paying a fraction of their cost, for centuries. The global systems of trade and finance are set up to extract profits from the Global South. Social scientists have found that the flow of resources and labor from the GS to the GN now equals $2.2 trillion per year. Furthermore, the damage to the agriculture, health, housing, infrastructure, etc. of the nations of the GS from climate change so far Is in the trillions of dollars and can be seen as part of the debt the GN owes the GS.

Debt cancellation is not rare. ,,,

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Canceling the Debts of Global South Nations: A Necessary Part of the Worldwide Climate Effort  – Part 1

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We finally have a fairly widespread understanding that we must stop burning fossil fuels to solve the climate crisis. It is just as true that we must cancel the debts of Global South nations to solve the climate crisis. There is no other way. I recognize that statement will strike some of you as radical or unreasonable. It’s taken me some time to reach this conclusion. In this post I’ll try to show how I, and others, have arrived at this position.

We know that emissions anywhere cause climate change everywhere. That means that humanity must stop emissions everywhere.

We must stop emissions in the wealthy, developed nations (the Global North) that have been the primary cause of the climate crisis. But that will not be sufficient. By 2030, 50% of all global emissions will come from the poorer nations that we collectively term the “Global South” (not including China). Eliminating emissions from the Global South is key to solving the climate crisis and will improve public health and prosperity in those nations.

Nearly 60 countries of the Global South are in debt distress or at risk of it and are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

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