Richest oil states should pay climate tax, says former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown
The former Labour PM wants the wealthiest oil producers to help poorer nations tackle climate change.
Mmmmmm how about the nations and companies who profited the most off of it?
Yes, we are looking at you, BP.
On the other hand, if countries like UK didn't have the consumption demand to buy these resources there'd be less environmental damage because of less extraction.
No, no it's their fault for making it. Just like Africa should of never of had all those juicy natural resources and available slaves. It was their fault.
Never Have had
Most of the slaves were captured by Africans in wars fought for slaves. European slave raids happend, but mostly Europeans just bought the slaves from African leaders. That is one of the reasons Africa is so fragmanted today. As more local power mean more potential targets to raid and the smaller you are the less you have to share the wealth from the slave trade.
I'm norwegian and I support this message. We grew our riches by extracting luxurious poison from the earth, intoxicating the world. It's time for rehab
I have a feeling nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and America won't warmly embrace a British exPM's idea for a tax on one of their greatest resources to subsidize foreign nations. Especially when it's framed as their reparations for harming the world.
The. British are also silent when it comes to paying reparations for their own misdeeds overseas, which unfortunately strips this statement of credibility.
I found this quote from him pretty rich because of that:
"These producer states have done literally nothing to earn this unprecedented windfall. It represents one of the biggest ever transfers of wealth from poor to rich nations."
We complain about the countries that extract the oil and the countries that burn it to make products, but ignore the fact that they do it for us…
You won’t ever see politicians telling individual people to stop buying so much crap though, because that’s their right and it would hurt the economy…
Lets look at the Big Oil companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajor:
Which of these companies is Arabian, Persian, African or South American?
All i can see is US Americans and Europeans, predominantly Englishmen and their descendents.
They're just listing western firms which aren't controlled by governments/royalty
Are all big and what he's talking about
The biggest oil producers in 2019 were:
https://www.offshore-technology.com/features/companies-by-oil-production/?cf-view
So one European with Rosneft and two US American with ExxonMobil and Chevron.
The use of the term in the popular media often excludes the national producers and OPEC oil companies who have a much greater global role in setting prices than the supermajors.
But yes, the USA does produce more oil than Saudi Arabia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
So if BP drills oil in Saudi Arabia and then sells it in, say, Egypt, do you think the UK makes money from that because the company has "British" in its name?
Since many stockholders are british, and the company has its headquarters in London, yes of course.
But my argument is also historical, where many of the oil fields in Saudi Arabia used to be operated by western oil companies. The Wahhabi fundamentalists were brought into power by the British and Americans to make the access to oil easier for them, Iran was couped by the CIA for western Oil access etc.
Blaming the countries where oil is exploited for the fossil society that was built and is maintained by western countries is cynical and hypocritical.
Shouldn't the consumers of oil be donating instead?
After all, it's our fault those nations are drilling up dinosaur juice.
What happens to the gargantuan amounts of petrol tax collected by the UK government every year?
