The U.S. has been pressing Congo to preserve its carbon-absorbing forests, but government officials want to exploit oil and gas reserves they say lie below them.
In my opinion, all of the first-world countries who don’t have natural carbon-absorbing resources like the Congolese forests or the Amazon should be paying the countries who do a tidy sum to maintain them. It feels like the sentiment is ‘Well, you owe it to the world to maintain these resources! We’re all counting on you!’, when many other countries could have had similar resources if we hadn’t already cut them down to make way for housing or industry or whatever else. We profited off of ours and now expect the few countries who have them remaining to just take one for the team. We should give them a strong incentive to do so.
In my opinion, all of the first-world countries who don’t have natural carbon-absorbing resources like the Congolese forests or the Amazon should be paying the countries who do a tidy sum to maintain them. It feels like the sentiment is ‘Well, you owe it to the world to maintain these resources! We’re all counting on you!’, when many other countries could have had similar resources if we hadn’t already cut them down to make way for housing or industry or whatever else. We profited off of ours and now expect the few countries who have them remaining to just take one for the team. We should give them a strong incentive to do so.