An organization that aims to mold worldwide climate change coverage is highlighting a “new twist on climate inequality.”Covering Climate Now (CCNow), an organization founded by the Columbia School of Journalism, The Nation and The Guardian, said communicating inequality is key as COP28 meetings began in Dubai.“Inequality has always been at the heart of the climate crisis,” insisted CCNow.“Traditionally, inequality between countries has loomed largest: Rich countries have been responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions, but poor countries have suffered the most from the extreme heat, drought, storms and rising seas driven by those emissions.”New 'research' highlighted last week in The Guardian argued that inequality within countries is just as important as the inequality between them.“As journalists cover the COP28 negotiations, which began Thursday in Dubai, this twist on inequality is worth our attention,” CCNow insisted.“Ignoring the role of inequality within a nation can cause governments to get both the policy and politics of climate action wrong. A salient example? France’s ‘yellow vest’ protests that erupted after President Emmanuel Macron increased taxes on diesel fuel and that forced Macron to retreat.”The Guardian’s “carbon divide” series suggested rich countries haven’t delivered on the $100 billion a year they pledged to provide help to poor countries' shift to non-carbon energy sources and boost resilience to climate impacts. “The richest 1% of the [global] population produced as much carbon pollution in one year as the five billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds,” The Guardian noted. Research from the Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute suggested the richest 10% are responsible for 50% of emissions and the poorest 50% for 8% of emissions.Lucas Chancel, a co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics, told The Guardian targeting the rich is more politically palpable.In the case of the yellow vests protests, Chancel said, “There were a lot of households that overall emitted relatively little, but their transport emissions were quite high because they live in rural places and they had no other option than to use the car. So the carbon tax just meant they had less disposable income — it did not reduce their emissions — and there was a backlash.”CCNow also complained, “Last week, the Dutch far-right PVV party sailed to victory after stoking populist complaints about migration and climate action’s supposed economic costs.”The PPV party’s manifesto promised, “We will stop the hysterical reduction in CO2.” In the US, former president Donald Trump justified withdrawing from the Paris Agreement with similar arguments.According to CCNow, the Paris Accord makes countries “legally obligated”, yet “Republicans continue to stoke fears that climate action imposes undue costs on everyday people.”The organization says, “Smarter policy can avoid such backlash. For example, a carbon dividends strategy ‘puts a price on carbon emissions and returns the money straight to the people,’ economist James K. Boyce wrote in Scientific American. “‘Most households would get more in dividends than they pay in higher fuel prices.’” Canada’s carbon tax works much the same way.However, CCNow seems to ignore a November Angus Reid poll, publicized worldwide by Reuters. A national survey found 42% of Canadians want the carbon tax to be scrapped and a further 17% would like it to be cut temporarily for the next three years. Another one-quarter want future increases scrapped. Only 15% supported the scheduled increases through 2030.Even so, The Guardian wrote, “Inequality between people has increasingly become a structural impediment to … climate action.” This prompted CCNow to conclude, “inequality is something we journalists have to integrate into our understanding and coverage of the climate story, both at COP28 and beyond.”In what CCNow called an “historic development,” countries agreed in COP28’s opening hours to launch a “loss and damage” fund to compensate vulnerable countries for climate injuries that cannot be fixed. However, Mohamed Adow of the NGO Climate Shift Africa said all previous pledges were but “a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the need.” CCNow, founded in 2019, boasts a media membership of 500 journalists and publications with a total audience of two billion people.
