미등록트럼프, 기후 협약 재탈퇴 예고...UN 기후 전략 바뀔까 [팩트매터]

Every year, the U.N. holds their annual climate change conference. It's called the Climate Change Conference of Parties, abbreviated as COP, COP. This year, the 29th annual COP conference was held on November the 11th in the city of Baku, which is the capital of Azerbaijan. However, very likely, this might be the very first time that you're hearing about it, because among several other reasons, Trump's sweeping victory in the election is already beginning to have impact on global policies throughout the whole world, including on the U.N.'s climate policies. In fact, it's not unfair to say that the entirety of this year's COP conference was deflated following Trump's victory. That's because Trump went on record ahead of the election, and then subsequently, he reconfirmed it after the election that he will be pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords. Here's a short clip from the debate with Joe Biden, where Trump laid it out, and this happened back in June. Take a listen. Now, to give you a brief refresher, because I'm sure if you're like me, you have already forgotten all the details, but the rationale for pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords the first time, well, it had to do with the fact that this particular agreement would essentially handcuff the U.S. while letting other countries do whatever they want. And so, if you look at a graph, even without the Paris Agreement, the U.S. has been decreasing its emissions and its pollution significantly since the year 2007. However, during that same time period, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and many other developing nations have been increasing their emissions as they play catch-up on the world stage. But the Paris Climate Accords did not really take this reality into consideration. Instead, according to an analysis that was done by the National Economic Research Associates, complying with the Paris Agreement over the course of 15 years would have forced the U.S. to cut production for the following sector. Paper would be down 12%. Cement would be down 23%. Iron and steel down 38%. Coal would be down 86%. Natural gas down 31%. And the overall cost of the economy would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP, about 6.5 million industrial jobs would be lost, and households overall would have $7,000 less in annual income. And so all that is obviously rough. But here's the kicker. While the Paris Agreement has all these punitive actions against the U.S., it would allow all those other countries, like China and India, to actually increase their emissions over the next eight years at least. They can do basically whatever they want for the next eight years while the U.S. has to cut production. Now there is a lot more nuance to it, but that is the gist. And that explains exactly why the U.S. is choosing to leave the Paris Climate Agreement. And of course, this actually would not be the first time. Obama, he joined the Paris Climate Accords. Trump withdrew us from those Accords. Biden rejoined the Accords. And now, once again, Trump is about to pull us back out. However, Trump's second withdrawal from the Paris Accords, it would be a big psychological as well as financial blow to the U.N.'s efforts to realize their sustainable development goals by the year 2030. Since, at least according to U.N. scientists, the U.S. is the second largest producer of climate emissions. And so, without having the U.S. on board, they fear that their plan just wouldn't work. Actually, the U.S. is not their only problem. Because America is not the only country showing signs of wavering when it comes to abiding by the U.N. climate agenda. That's because at this year's COP conference, not only did the U.S. not send any high-level representatives, but many other Western nations also failed to send any top elected officials to represent their countries as well. In fact, only two of the G7 nations were present. You had Italy and the U.K. Leaders from France, Germany, Canada, Japan and the U.S. were all absent. Furthermore, in a fairly good analysis, the top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-emitting countries were all absent. Together, these 13 countries, they're responsible for well over 70% of global gas emissions. And so, having this type of a conference without them is like essentially not having a conference at all. Also, the president of the European Union declined to attend this year. China, India and Indonesia did not send any of their top brass. And the list just goes on and on. Now, officials within the United Nations, they downplayed this lack of head-of-state star power by releasing a general statement saying that every country is represented and they are active in behind-the-scenes climate-related talks. But just if you look at it on a historical timeline, the failure of so many leading nations to send over their top elected officials, or even like their number two or number three level guys, it does send a message that support might be waning. Although, to be fair, I will present to you both sides of the argument, there were also several extenuating circumstances that kept some leaders from coming to the summit altogether. For instance, you had the G20 meeting held in Brazil, scheduled just a few days into the COP summit, so there was a bit of a scheduling conflict. You had natural disasters and personal illnesses keep some other leaders away. You had geopolitical grievances keep some leaders from going to Azerbaijan, specifically France. And then, of course, the upset in the US election tied up some leaders in America as well. However, regardless of the reasoning and the rationale, the optics were not good. And furthermore, those optics were made even worse when you had Azerbaijan's president, the president of the nation hosting the actual event, kick off the entire COP 29 conference with some, you can say, unexpected opening remarks. Take a listen. which is number one oil and gas producer in the world and produces 30 times more oil than Azerbaijan, called us, PetroState. To accuse us that we have oil is the same like to accuse us that we have more than 250 sunny days a year in Baku. Countries should be judged by other criteria. For instance, level of unemployment in Azerbaijan, it is 5.4%. Level of poverty, it is 5.2%. It's a gift of the God. Every natural resource, whether it's oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources. And countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them. Now, it is completely understandable why the president of Azerbaijan is so keen to shift the emphasis off of oil and gas producing countries. In Azerbaijan, you have fossil fuels make up around 90% of their export income and account for about two thirds of their overall GDP. And so taken in that light, his comments make perfect sense. However, critics of his remarks say that as the president of the hosting nation, well, he damaged the credibility of the talks starting from day number one by supporting the fossil fuel industry, which the COP conference is seeking to ultimately completely do away with. And by the way, just as an interesting aside, this seems to be a new trend because just last year, COP28, it was held in the United Arab Emirates. And during that meeting, you had their minister of industry get up to the podium and he, just like the president of Azerbaijan, criticized the science behind the reduction schedule of the UN while at the same time calling for an acceptance of the fossil fuel industry as a viable source of energy. Take a listen. That means it is essential that no issue is left off the table. And yes, as I have been saying, we must look for ways and ensure the inclusion of the role of fossil fuels. And so as you can see, this year, Azerbaijan's president was actually the second leader in two years to express support for fossil fuels at a UN climate change event. Taken together, this internal dissent, countries not showing up to the meetings, and the US under Trump about to pull out of the Paris climate accords, well, it appears that the UN's climate change conference is perhaps beginning to flounder. But that does not mean that they've given up on pushing their new initiatives in order to ostensibly achieve their climate goals by the year 2030. And along that line, at this year's conference, a new initiative was introduced. Or rather, it's not necessarily a new initiative, it's just a repackaging of a previous initiative. This year, it's called the Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience. And just for your reference, Baku is a reference to Baku, Azerbaijan, the city where this particular conference was held. Now, let me give you a brief breakdown of what this latest climate change initiative actually means and what it'll mean for the citizens in countries around the world moving forward, if their country still happens to be committed to the UN's climate change agenda. Now, if you happen to have been in Baku for this year's conference, and you opened up the booklet that contained the agenda for COP29, you would find something called the Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience. And in the agenda, it's described as follows, quote, an initiative to deliver various outcomes in human development, including catalyzing investment in education, skills, health, and well-being, in particular for children and youth, establishing cop-to-cop continuity and enhancing environmental literacy through education standards. Now, thus far, as of today, there's been no draft released showing exactly what this initiative will entail point by point. But there are a few context clues that we can use by reading between the lines. After the COP29 event, you had a joint statement that was put out in support of the Baku Initiative. You can see it up on your screen. And this was put out by the countries who actually attended the event. And the statement was also a bit light on details, but it clearly hit on the priorities of the initiative, which is to obtain more money and to establish more, you can say, soft power to influence the party nations. Here is part of what that joint statement said, quote, scaling up age and gender responsive climate finance for investments in human development, including education, health, social protection, decent jobs and skills development, while promoting synergies and efficiencies in funding through multi-stakeholder partnerships and coordination. Then the statement, it goes on to list the areas in which they're aiming to cooperate, quote, continuing to support the mobilization and catalyzation of climate finance that is age and gender responsive to promote strategic initiatives in education, health, social protection, employment and skills development. OK, so this was from the joint statement from the countries who were at the actual event. Alongside the statement, you had this document here that was released alongside it from the UN containing the Baku initiative's guiding principles. And in it, you have principle number three, which is titled invest in integrating quality climate change education at all levels and regularly assessing student competencies to address climate change. And that particular principle is a little bit long, but I'll read to you most of it just so you can get an idea of what they're actually planning to institute. Quote, This principle aims to ensure that all learners, including children, youth, adults, in particular girls and women, migrants and vulnerable groups, acquire essential knowledge, skills, values and attitudes on climate action and resilience addressing the cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral domains of learning. It seeks to integrate climate change education across all relevant subject areas, including social, economic and environmental dimensions at all levels of formal, informal and non-formal education and learning, including knowledge and values from indigenous systems and practices from early childhood to technical and vocational education and training and higher education. Achieving this requires collaboration on greening curriculum, schools, teacher training and education systems, capacities and communities. Assessment plays a key role in guiding educational priorities. It is crucial for education systems to gather data on learning outcomes related to environmental sustainability and climate change through the integration of climate literacy into national and international assessments. Countries can monitor progress against benchmarks and learn from the practices of top performing systems. Now, that is comprehensive. One of the main principles of the Baku initiative is to establish a global curriculum of education so that children all the way up through adulthood across the globe are taught the latest and curated UN approved climate science, again, from elementary school all the way up through grad school, which as a matter of strategy is a great principle. It's an effective way to ensure that future generations across the whole globe support these climate related agendas. But if you're a rational person watching this video, you might be asking yourself, how could the UN even set up a global education curriculum? I mean, maybe for developed countries, it might be easy, but in developing countries, wouldn't it require massive investment in both technology as well as education infrastructure? And the answer is that, yes, it would. But don't worry, because this principle number three of the Baku initiative, it ties in perfectly with another initiative that the UN is working on, something that they call DPI, digital public infrastructure. In 2023, the UN published their DPI playbook. You can see it up on your screen. And this book acts as basically a guide to all countries looking to kickstart their own DPI program. And within that booklet, here is how the UN itself officially defines DPI. Which sounds great. But if you take a moment and you set aside the superfluous words in that statement, what the UN is essentially trying to establish is a singular, searchable, centralized platform of identification and data collection to be adopted by every nation. And this platform, it would include every individual person's identifiable information. In other words, DPI is a plan to implement a global digital ID program, a program that the UN admits in other documents will eventually link not just to someone's general identity, but also to things like their banking and credit card information, their social media accounts, their credit scores, and anything else useful that can be digitized and associated with a specific person. For instance, in August of 2023, the UN published another DPI report. You can see it up on your screen, writing that the new platform will help to manage crises as well as achieve the UN's sustainable development goals. Here's specifically what it says. With a DPI approach, countries can advance a range of development objectives and respond better during crisis. Although each piece of DPI can have an impact on its own, the interaction of this infrastructure can unlock the most significant impacts in countries and across the sustainable development goals. Oh, I'm so excited. This is going to be so good. The DPI. The same month that the UN released this document, they released a separate six-page document, which acknowledged that they are currently way off track from being able to achieve their 17 sustainable development goals before the year 2030. And they called in this document for a pivot toward more intense initiatives so that they can actually achieve all their goals by the year 2030. And included among these intense initiatives that can help them get back on track was DPI, digital public infrastructure. They say in this document that DPI is the key breakthrough that will provide the necessary momentum to achieve the sustainable development goals. And they wrote that their plan is to have DPI implemented in at least 100 countries by the year 2030. And in order to achieve 100 countries, their first plan is something called the 50 in 5 initiative. This program, which was launched last year, is working to get at least 50 developing countries to design, launch, and scale their own digital public infrastructure within the next five years. Then they can use that infrastructure to plug into the global network. Now up on your screen is the website for the 50 in 5 initiative, which includes clips from countries sharing their own experiences with DPI. As an example, you have a video from Bangladesh, which includes a clip featuring Anir Choudhury from the UN Development Program. Take a look. By working together on DPIs, we also have specifics in each country across health, across education, across climate action. So I think we'll certainly get there much more reliably and much more quickly. And we hope that the 50 in 5 campaign would allow us, enable us to get there faster. Bangladesh is leading by example, showcasing the transformative power of digital public infrastructure. And by participating in 50 in 5, are working with other countries to accelerate their own DPI journeys. And again, it seems like all these different, seemingly disparate UN initiatives really do work together seamlessly. For instance, at the same time that you have the Baku Initiative and this DPI infrastructure network being built around the world, you also have UNESCO, which is the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. They recently put out a plan, you can see it up on your screen, to regulate social media and online communications in order to, as they say, clamp down on false information and conspiracy theories. In fact, to that end, UNESCO published a report, again, you can see it up on your screen, titled Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms. And this report, it suggests imposing global policies to stop the spread of various forms of speech, while at the same time, promoting other forms of speech, such as cultural diversity and gender equality type of messages. And of course, this type of thing would be made possible by DPI, the digital public infrastructure that is now being built in at least 50 developing nations around the whole world. In other words, if you happen to be a poor person living in a developing country, and in the next five years, you want to access internet connectivity, you might only be able to do so if you sign up for their digital ID program. But then once you do, you'll be subject to censorship, surveillance, and possible recrimination if you say the wrong thing. Now, this is not happening yet, but if you look down the road and you look at the different components that are currently being built, it's a safe assumption to make that this is where all these initiatives are headed. By the way, it's worth mentioning that the Biden-Harris administration was on board with the DPI program. In fact, in March 2023, you can see that the National Cybersecurity Strategy called for development of a digital ID ecosystem as one of its strategic objectives because enhanced digital ID solutions and these types of infrastructure can enable a more innovative, equitable, safe, and efficient digital economy. In that statement, they also cited the billions of dollars that the US government fraudulently handed out during the COVID times in forms of relief as evidence that a more secure system of ID needs to be in place. However, the incoming Trump administration does not appear to be on board with the DPI plan, meaning that depending on your viewpoint of this UN Global Digital Fingerprint Plan, we're either going to be missing out or we just dodged a bullet. Just depends on how you view things. And so that is where we currently are. The Baku Initiative is just the latest iteration of the climate change plan being pushed forward by the UN for the last 30 years. Included in the Baku Initiative is principle number three, which has global curriculum being taught to kids around the world. That is the approved climate change science that the UN wants to get out there to the broader populace. In order to achieve this, you have a separate initiative called DPI, which is establishing this type of infrastructure in different nations, which will give them great connectivity and technological infrastructure. But the cost to that will be this digital ID that everyone will have to sign up for in order to access the internet essentially. UNESCO put out a report saying that they will be using this type of infrastructure to police speech online. And while the Biden and Harris administration were on board with this and actually going along with it, the Trump administration seems to not be on board with it and pulling out of as many of these programs as possible. And it's worth mentioning that other developed Western nations appear to also be pulling out of the UN Climate Initiative as well. Although it's not clear whether DPI is one of the initiatives they're pulling out of, but at least if you look at COP 29, it does appear they're generally pulling back their support. So that's where we currently stand in regards to the Baku Initiative, the Trump administration, as well as how it relates to the UN's climate agenda. If you'd like to go deeper into anything that we discussed in today's episode, I'll throw all my research notes. You'll be able to find them in the description box below. If you are the type of person that likes to dig further into the wheat. And also, I would love to know your opinion on the matter. Do you think that this is ultimately a good thing, that maybe conspiracy theories being circulated online is not a good thing? And so the UN is a good arbiter to be able to police that. Or do you think that that gives way too much power to a body that is super national? It's not even like national. It's super national. So there would be like a lot less checks and balances if you're, let's say, a young person in Bangladesh and you're posting something that you know is true. Maybe you saw it firsthand, but it's being marked as false and as a conspiracy theory. And your DPI score, however it's measured, is being dinged for that and you're being punished for that. And you're trying to fight back, but you're just a poor kid in Bangladesh fighting back against this kind of censorship program coming out of the UN. There's a big disparity there. So you might not be able to do anything. But on the other hand, you might say, well, that kid in Bangladesh might be actually pushing conspiracy theories that might lead to violence. And so that you need that kind of a program to make sure that that message doesn't spread. So I don't know. I'd love to know your thoughts. I'd love to know whether you think this is as a net, a net positive or a net negative. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I'll be reading through them later tonight, as well as into the next week. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed. And most importantly, stay free.