Head-on | Global North and the geopolitics of entitlement

Three issues terrify the leaders of wealthy countries in the Global North. The first is the rising geopolitical and military threat posed by the China-Russia axis. The second is the danger of conflicts in the Middle East spinning out of control. The third is probably the most worrying for its long-term impact on the rich world: global warming. For over thirty years of climate change summits, the Global North had blocked any mention of oil and gas as major contributors to carbon emissions. That fiction has ended at the COP28 summit in Dubai. The summit concludes on Tuesday, 12 December. The official statement will mention that oil and gas production, which accounts for over 50 per cent of all carbon emissions, must be cut. Coal, the villain of all previous climate change summits, accounts for less than 40 per cent of carbon emissions but has for years been the whipping boy for the Global North’s climate change warriors. The Global North, already industrialised, uses very little coal in its energy mix. The Global South, including India, still in the process of industrialising, uses a lot of coal. The decades-long veil over the copious use of oil and gas by the rich Global North has been lifted at COP28. Climate change experts have long known that the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius by 2050 is impossible without heavy cuts in the production of oil and gas. The Global North’s economy — from aviation and automobiles to manufacturing and information technology — would grind to a halt if oil and gas use was cut by over 80 per cent, the level needed for meeting the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark. India had insisted on not singling out coal and including oil and gas reduction in the draft of the final statement at COP26 in 2021 in Glasgow. After much persuasion, India received support from the United States and the European Union — the biggest users of oil and gas. Not surprisingly however, by a sleight of hand, the oil and gas paragraph was removed from the final summit statement. At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh last year, India did not raise the issue again, knowing the Global North delegation would anyway scuttle it. In the final summit statement to be issued in Dubai on 12 December, reducing the use of oil and gas as part of fossil fuels will for the first time in 30 years be included as a clear mitigation goal for all countries. The Global North, comprising North America and Europe, has been the principal contributor over the past 200 years to global warming. Yet, it puts the onus on developing countries like India to cut its development trajectory by reducing the use of coal. With per capita carbon emissions of less than 2 tonnes per year, every Indian pollutes the atmosphere a fraction of every American or Australian who emits over 15 tonnes of carbon every year. Sense of entitlement Climate change is not the only area where the Global North exhibits a sense of entitlement nourished by 300 years of Western economic hegemony. For the US and Europe, you are either with them or against them. On China-Russia, there is no compromise. American and European outrage against India for continuing to transact commercially with Russia in defiance of Western sanctions has been muted because India is the only country in Asia, Africa and South America with the military and economic capability of countering China’s threat in the Indo-Pacific. If India did not have those strategic assets or a large, growing economy and market, the US and Europe would have wasted little time in imposing sanctions on India as it did in 1998 after the Pokhran nuclear test. India is today too useful to cast adrift. But the anger simmers under the surface in the chanceries of Washington and London. To bring India to heel without damaging the India-US strategic partnership that has utility value, the US uses embedded media. Financial Times and The New York Times are periodically employed to embarrass India as they did over the alleged plot to kill the terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Reports are leaked by the Pentagon and published by friendly Western newspapers to keep India off-balance. Volatile Middle East As much as the climate crises and the China-Russia threat worries the Global North, the Israel-Hamas conflict couldn’t have come at a worse time for US President Joe Biden. Facing a tough re-election next year, Biden has been slipping in the ratings over his handling of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. Biden will be 82 next November. Most Americans think he is not cognitively capable of a second-term presidency. The alternative – Donald Trump – splits Americans down the middle. With the US budget office warning that funds for Ukraine will dry up by 31 December, there’s a growing realisation in the US and Europe that Russia might actually emerge stronger from a victory in Ukraine. Meanwhile, in the volatile Middle East, a separate Palestine state co-existing with Israel appears the only guarantee of Israel’s long-term security. The onus of making Tel Aviv swallow that reality rests on Washington. Anglo-American plot The creation of a white Jewish European Israel in the middle of West Asia’s Arabs was a carefully thought-out British-American blueprint. It was devised towards the end of World War I in 1917 when the Ottoman Empire which controlled the Middle East appeared heading for defeat with its German allies. The Balfour Declaration by British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour endorsing the creation of a Jewish homeland alongside the Palestine state, which at the time existed within the Ottoman Empire, set into motion the events we are witnessing today a century later. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the original sin. The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.