Climate Reparations

Understanding misplaced privilege

When I was in college, I had respect for both hard work and the privilege of receiving an education. I spent my summer months working long hours in Northern Minnesota resort towns to earn money for the following year's tuition. I knew that sitting in college classes, studying Dante, Socrates and the Old Testament was a privilege because it surely beat schlepping plates to and from hot kitchens all day long. I had an appreciation for my education because I worked hard to make it happen.

I attended a private liberal arts school and knew my tuition funding method was in the minority. Most of my classmates had hard working parents that footed the bill on their behalf. Those parent-funded students fell into two distinct camps. Camp one was mostly motivated and academically achieving coeds focused on STEM majors. Although they did not work to pay tuition and the semester starting trip to the bookstore did not drain their bank accounts, they had respect that their parents did and generally attempted to honor that respect by utilizing their gift of an education to its fullest extent.

Camp two was harder to spot my freshman year as they arrived looking almost identical to camp one. However, as the academic years progressed, camp two dropped the button-down Oxfords and penny loafers in favor of tie-dyed shirts and sandals. Clean cropped hairdos gave way to long unkempt coifs. In the mid-80s on my college campus, the mommy and daddy funded camp two students began to look like offspring spawned on a drunken night between the cast of the Musical "Hair" and "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Camp two was all about bringing "truth to power" and they loathed the industrious students in camp one. “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” was their mantra. Although, they were more embittered by the fact that the previous generation had Haight Ashbury Park and its patron Saint, Dennis Leary to guide them while they remained rudderless on a cushy Midwestern campus with fellow students pursuing Reagan styles economic success and “trusting people over 30!”

It was in those academic settings of the 80’s where professors began teaching the desensitization of hypocrisy. Truly sheltered trust fund babies emerged from their humanities classes with divine knowledge seemingly sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus. They suddenly knew the answers to complex geo-political problems, how to end poverty, and that pounding guns into plowshares would not expose our country to the evils of tyrannical foes. The dorm rooms of the camp twos were easy to spot as well as they had the obligatory poster of Bob Marley on the wall, Bob Dillon in the turntable and the smell of day-old pizza and Mary Jane wafting from within. If you were lucky enough, one of these Camp two’ers would show up to your 8 o’clock philosophy class to enlighten the professor on how a Coke can could be God. (Honestly, that is a true story that happened in my philosophy of religion class.)

So when I saw this National Review article NR Climate Reparations that Joe Biden approved of Climate Reparations, I could not help but wonder if this notion did not start in the patchouli oil soaked daze of 80's higher education? For, as I surmised from my college example, misplaced privilege occurs when a group of people make no connection to economic mechanisms that fund their privilege. My camp two college cohorts had no respect for their parents’ labors, sacrifices and dreams. When their well-funded and tenured professors gave them simple answers to complex problems with no economic context, they ran with those scissors with no understanding of the contradiction they were living.

We have that same problem in our current administration. With a president and congress entirely devoid of economic understanding, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, emerged from the COP27 Climate Summit in Egypt with the simple solution to a very complex problem. The US taxpayer will now be forced to fund reparations to the global “shakedown” charlatans, claiming the poorer countries are damaged by CO2 emissions from wealthy countries. But here is the rub, China is the second largest economy on the planet, yet is still listed as a “developing” country. Thus, China will be a benefactor in this wealth transfer scheme. The United States, though we are responsible for 11% of global emissions will be funding the number two economy, China who is currently responsible for 27% of harmful emissions.

It certainly appears to me that my camp two college classmates are all grown up and in charge of our country’s climate response team. Life has taught them nothing about economics, wealth, and respect for those who work. They have, however, learned never to let a good political narrative go to waste. Thus, the United States will continue to wither from within for no foreign power could do to us what our own economically inept leaders are doing to weaken our country. China merely needs to wait in the wings collecting big fat climate reparations paychecks. Like the Huns before them, who could have easily rolled ancient Romans in a battle, the Chinese know it is better to keep the “gold-producing” economic engine intact and paying reparations then to defeat it. Tis better to milk the economically ignorant United States of its cash than to crush it. And, like Rome before us, as long as we Americans are obedient little imperialist, the Chinese will keep our self-flagellating 80’s educated goose alive. However, what our leaders don’t understand is this symbiotic relationship will last only as long as we continue to pony up the cash. As soon as the reparations ends, so does the United States. That will be our recompense for following misplaced privilege instead of our Divine covenant. Just ask any Coke can, it will tell you…