–– Mark Christopher
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As I write this piece, the COP28 Climate-Change Conference is underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Dubai. Every year for the last 28 years, at this time of the year, the United Nations hosts the COP meetings with up to 70,000 people flying in from all over the world for the two-week extravaganza. The goal of COP and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is to meet to discuss ways to limit CO2 emissions.
But what does COP28 have to do with Africa? One of the topics of discussion at this year’s COP28 conference concerns negotiations by wealthy oil barons, in the UAE, buying up land rights in Africa to plant trees on protected land to serve as carbon offsets for wealthy polluters in the West and Middle East. Carbon offsets are purchased by those who can afford them to offset the carbon footprint of jetsetters by planting CO2-absorbing trees. So, rather than curbing their own activities, the wealthy continue to live their extravagant lifestyles and purchase what amounts to pollution permits in other parts of the world — like Africa — where trees are planted as CO2 compensation.
Through the private company Blue Carbon in the UAE, businessmen are negotiating to buy a tenth of Liberia’s land mass, a fifth of Zimbabwe’s land, and thousands of hectares in Zambia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Blue Carbon would then sell carbon credits that are linked to forests preserved on the purchased land.
A carbon credit is essentially an imaginary commodity that is neither seen nor handled. The result of these carbon credits amounts to buying a pollution permit in one part of the world while planting a tree in Africa. This will have the effect of displacing Africans from their land. It also serves to commodify creation while giving the wealthy a permit to do what they want without the thought of modifying their own excesses. To make matters worse, those most affected by these negotiations are completely unaware that their respective governments are selling out to the highest carbon-credit bidder. Most will learn this too late.
The truth is that Africa is only responsible for 4% of the world’s CO2 emissions, while China leads the world with 27% and America comes in second with 15% of the world’s man-made CO2.
In reality, the whole idea of the carbon offset industry is nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme at Africa’s expense. CO2 is actually plant food and a building block of life, not a pollutant. There have been times in the ancient past when atmospheric CO2 levels were higher in a pre-industrial world than they are today after the Industrial Revolution. It is also well known that atmospheric CO2 has a saturation band. This means that the current levels of atmospheric CO2 of 411 parts per million could be doubled without the doubling of the heat effect. All of this means that the supposed ill effects of CO2 emissions are grossly exaggerated.
What Africa needs most is not CO2 mitigation, but rather access to abundant, cheap energy to fuel healthy economies. This is the only way for Africa to alleviate poverty. Instead, there are those presently at the COP28 conference seeking to exploit Africa at the expense of those who live here and this all in the name of climate change.
This is all a reminder of the following principles from God’s word:
1. While humanity has a God-ordained obligation to care for all that God has created (Genesis 1:28 & 2:15), this needs to be done with an equal degree of consideration for both creation and image-bearing humanity. Man’s stewardship is meant to benefit both humanity and creation while avoiding the trap of favouring one over the other.
2. Humanity should be free to live their lives. It is not a sin for one to be wealthy any more than it is a sin to be poor. Yet, for the believer in Christ, there is a biblical principle to avoid covetousness while escaping the snare of materialism. While one doesn’t necessarily need to live a spartan lifestyle, conversely, one needs to avoid the sin of greed that leads to overemphasising materialism. Many environmental concerns would be alleviated if materialism was curbed.
3. God is sovereign over all He has created, not man. Genesis 8:22 is an encouraging reminder that while man is responsible for caring for creation, God is ultimately sovereign over it: “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.” And Colossians 1:16-17 reminds us of this about Christ, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”