Good luck. Black people in America have been trying to get the USA to pay reparations for generations of enslavement, terrorism, and genocide. We deserve reparations too along with American native peoples. We will never get it though, so I am pretty sure 3rd party nations will never get it either. The only reparations America has paid so far has been to slave owners and Japanese Americans.
Climate change is largely America's fault, so Kerry's statement seems asinine to me, and quickly erases the already low levels of respect I've had for him.
country run by old fart boomers, what do u expect ? they used to have everything handed to them with no effort in life. also boomers are the worst gen ever: they think the world revolves around them and dont believe in taking and giving back.
Another post about this where people didn't read the article, but jump to anti-American conclusions. This story is about American politicians arguing semantics. The article says that America does contribute to a fund that was agreed upon by many countries in a summit in Egypt. Whether that is fair is debatable, but America is paying in to it.
Every country is refusing to use the term "reparations" because it implies legal guilt, and no country wants to get "sued" by the world.
Again, this is a pointless argument about semantics, and what term to use.
Thing is that there is legal guilt associated with US colonialism. The atrocities US commits against other countries are well documented, and US backed institutions such as the IMF are directly responsible for perpetuating the economic relations that have created the climate crisis. Acknowledging the role US has played in creating the crisis and holding US accountable is far from pointless.
"Reparations" not only imply guilt, but also justice and fairness. Contributing to a fund that doesn't cover even a fraction of the damage caused by the US is not nearly good enough and proves that the US should be forced to pay reparations.
You realize that paying C02 emissions based on capita for a country makes no sense. If you believe a country should be paying than it pays per country impact. So that would stipulate that China needs to be paying twice what the U.S. does.... which I somehow imagine you aren't going to agree with.
Of all the countries burning fossil fuels, why does the US get singled out for reparations other than it's a popular punching bag and the "face" of western capitalism? It's not like the US is sitting on stacks of cash. Quite the opposite...
Lots of reasons, starting with the fact that US uses far more energy per capita than most countries. US also imposes its economic system upon the world that necessitates constant growth an consumption. US arguably being the wealthiest country in the word is also in a better position than most countries to actually do something about the problem.
Compare this with China which has an actual plan to transition off fossil fuels that it's actively implementing. China now leads the world in both nuclear and renewables by a huge margin, and continues to implement clean energy solutions at scale. If China is able to do this, then why is US isn't puling its weight?