July 5—It turns out that climate change is real—though perhaps not the one embraced by the financial elite.
Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has long been thought to be favorable towards “green” technologies, more appropriate for a world dealing with climate change. As a man close to labor and the rights of both labor and the poor, Lula may have been susceptible to the idea that less energy-intensive production modes would translate to more jobs to go around for the poor.
On June 23, at French President Emmanuel Macron’s “Summit for a New Global Financial Pact,” Lula heard South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa call for the Inga Dam project on the Congo River to address the 600 million Africans in 2023 still living without electricity. Ramaphosa challenged Macron to stop blathering about a global tax of $1 trillion for climate change and begin by funding the electrification project: “Let’s get that done and then we will be convinced that you are serious with the promises that you make…. It is estimated that the price tag would be $80 billion and generate at least 42 gigawatts of electricity, and would have an absolutely revolutionary impact on the entire continent’s energy supply and economy.”
Lula responded by announcing that he is throwing away his prepared speech. He delivered excited, extemporaneous remarks. He tore into those that have the resources to fund the Inga Dam project, but who refuse to do so. Such “people say, ‘Ah, I will help this little thing here, this little thing there,’ what is needed is a leap in quality. Make investments in structural things which change the life of countries.”
Yesterday, Lula took his turn in rotation as the chair of the Southern Common Market, or Mercosur, the customs union formed by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. He promptly tore into the European Union’s March 2023 attempt to add a new condition to the Mercosur-EU, whereby sanctions would be used to enforce the so-called “voluntary” commitments to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
“The Additional Instrument presented by the European Union in March of this year is unacceptable. Strategic partners do not negotiate based on distrust and the threat of sanctions. It is imperative that Mercosur presents a quick and forceful response. It is inadmissible to give up the purchasing power of the state—one of the few instruments of industrial policy that we have left. We have no interest in agreements that condemn us to the eternal role of exporters of raw materials, ores and oil.
“We need policies that contemplate deep regional integration, based on qualified work and the production of science, technology and innovation. This requires more integration, the articulation of productive processes and the interconnection of energy, roads and communications.”
The point is that the Global South is not maintaining a respectful, subservient silence when the West blathers on about their latest fad. Leaders of underdeveloped countries, including those who previously had “went along to get along” with the intellectually sterile fads of the post-industrial West, turn from “green” to “human” in the twinkling of an eye. There has been a distinct climate change—that is, a change in the air, amongst the Global South. It is as real as a mid-afternoon summer storm.
Curiously, such climate change is not limited to the Global South. Western youth don’t have to contemplate which sex they are today if the possibility of conquering diseases, having electricity and clean water plentiful for all, investigating the mysteries of the Solar System and the galaxy were real—that is, if they thought their lives made a difference. Here’s a start: “Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!”
