Page 15 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2021 (English)

China in Latin America reflects a new historical trend that a ects the productive structures of the region, strengthening the export model based on primary goods. In fact, more than 70 percent of China’s imports from Latin America correspond to natural resources (mainly oil, iron, copper and soybeans), which have been expanding due to the growth and relative scarcity of these resources in the giant. Asia, as well as its long-term vision, which attributes to the region the role of an important supplier.
Long Term Solutions
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in its report “Fiscal Policy and Climate Change: Recent Experiences of the Ministries of Finance of Latin America and the Caribbean” argues that the long-term solution is to recommend scal policies that accelerate the transition to economies green and pave the way for the Region to meet decarbonization targets. According to the agency, green growth has the potential to increase resilience to climate change and create new economic opportunities that generate more and better jobs. The publication also highlights the importance of reducing economic dependence on fossil fuels by reducing subsidies to maintain economic competitiveness and ensure scal sustainability.
The decarbonization of the region’s economies can create 15 million net new jobs by 2030, and every dollar invested in making infrastructure and economies more resilient can generate up to $ 4 in economic benefits. According to the study, the economies of the Region should create new patterns of production and consumption of goods and services to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. To meet this objective, the Ministries of Finance should consider implementing scal policies that promote these changes and mitigate possible risks to public nances generated by extreme weather events and upcoming structural and technological changes.
“The clock is ticking. The unprecedented level of transformations that must occur in all economic sectors requires a much deeper level of participation by the nance ministries in policies to combat the e ects of climate change, ”says Benigno López, vice president of Sectors and Knowledge at the IDB.
Communists and Capitalist
The issue of climate change has an important political edge, which should not be neglected and is part of the total analysis. For some, it is the ideologies of
the left, specifically communism, that is behind environmentalism in order to prepare the ground for a world government and apparently “save the Earth and Humanity” from an invented or greatly exaggerated crisis.
It is argued that in recent decades, with the communist forces in retreat and the political and economic catastrophes of the leftist regimes exposed, this ideological group clung to environmentalism to continue with its plans. This doctrine originally promoted a utopia, a “Heaven on Earth,” in order to incite riots and overthrow the existing social system. It is indicatedthatunder the false identity of environmentalism, communism took a similar approach, but the vision it describes is exactly the opposite: instead of the wonderful utopia of the workers there is a terrifying dystopia, a vision of “hell on Earth.” Under this assumption, in a matter of decades, humanity’s very survival will be at risk due to global warming, landslides, tsunamis, droughts, oods, and heat waves. Those targeted by this movement are not the poor, but rather the rich, who are expected to abandon their lifestyles, it adds.
On the contrary, for left-wing environmentalists the culprits of greenhouse gases, “the main motivator of this global cataclysm”, are not the cause but rather the symptom of, in their words, an economic system that has declared war against the life on planet Earth.
They argue that in the face of the global crisis posed by climate change, capitalism oscillates between two strategies: on the one hand, a campaign to deny scienti c evidence tending to present it as an “ideology” rather than as a factual fact, and on the other , a strategy to promote a “green” or “sustainable” capitalism, which promotes international agreements and ghts for a partial and limited reconversion of productive systems, while preserving and strengthening the capitalist accumulation and exploitation model.
It is added that the eld of denial is very broad. In its ranks they militate from Trump, the Republican Party and the Tea Party in the United States, to minority sectors of scientists. Environmentalists point out that the core is in large corporations. Thus, the “denial industry” would have as main drivers oil, automotive, metallurgical corporations and public service companies, which are responsible for the emissions of polluting gases that generate the increase in temperature.
But there are also the ecological dissidents.
“There is no Apocalypse”
Michael Shellenberger, a long-time environmental activist, well known throughout the world, published his book “There Is No Apocalypse”, in which he indicates that the “rhetoric” about the climate crisis “does not correspond to reality” and the scaremongering about it “It hurts us all.”
Shellenberger, whose articles appear regularly in major American newspapers, is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent research organization based in the California town of Berkeley that advocates for clean energy and climate justice. In 2008, Time magazine named him “Hero of the Environment.”
In his new book, he a irms that “many trends are going in the right direction” to x the ecological crisis, so maintaining alarmist positions is negative, starting with the planet itself, and denounces “powerful nancial interests” that drive them taking advantage of “desire of transcendence ”of people. For this reason, he criticizes “climate activists who predict that billions will die from climate change, American politicians who say that the world will end if we do not radically change our lives.” He adds that “neither of these arguments is correct.” Thus, Shellenberger indicates that, for example, the United States reduced its emissions “more than any other nation since 2000” and that most European countries “reached their peak and are decreasing them since the 1980s”, while emissions Developing nations “will also lower them when they reach their wealth point.” Regarding food, “we produce 25 percent more than we need to survive and FAO published reports on how to drastically increase crop yields despite climate change”, while extreme weather events, “although more intense - in around ve percent - it is expected that they will be less frequent, by 25 percent ”.
In fact, deaths from natural disasters “decreased by 90 percent since 1900” and this despite “enormous growth in world population” due to human adaptability. The same reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lack “apocalyptic scenarios” and “do not say that millions of people will die”, so “there is no reason why we cannot adapt to climate change” without anguish. According to Shellenberger, the reason there is so much concern is because some environmental organizations, including Extinction Rebellion, Sierra Club or EDF, “have drifted into an alarmist religion” and “have lled their bank accounts with interest-bearing money. energy to promote the closure of nuclear power plants ”.
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