The summit has sought to reframe the African continent, which has enormous amounts of clean energy minerals and renewable energy sources, as less of a victim of climate change driven by the world’s biggest economies and more of the solution.

But investment in the continent in exchange for the ability to keep polluting elsewhere has angered some in Africa who prefer to see China, the United States, India, the European Union and others rein in their emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

“We reject forced solutions on our land,” Priscilla Achakpa, founder of the Nigeria-based Women Environmental Programme, told summit participants on the event’s final day. She urged the so-called “Global North” to “remove yourself from the perspective of the colonial past.”

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So after reading the article, there is no information as to what China is spending $6 trillion on. The vast majority of the article discusses how China is building a really long road and that they will be depending on coal until at least 2050.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Stimulating internal production is not a goal anyone should have - global isolation hurts citizens.

        Bad things happening is not a reason to kneecap your economy.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Lol, yeah…

          Because the people working those sweatshops have such great lives too.

          Those aren’t “suicide nets” in iPhone factories, they’re “communal hammocks”.

          And the countries that don’t make anything anymore so they have crazy unemployment levels can just print money so their citizens don’t starve too!

          It’s so easy, why isn’t a smart person like you running the economy of every nation?

          /s

          At least lemmy still has a block button.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Because the people working those sweatshops have such great lives too.

            Their lives are demonstrably better than before those opportunities arrived, and the increased wealth enables governments to grow inclusive institutions that ban sweatshops and still benefit from the relative value of the US dollar to local currency

            People with my views do run the economy. This is economic orthodoxy.

            • girlfreddyOP
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              1 year ago

              So you’re equivalency is saying that slaves had it better in America than they did in Africa?

              Doooood. 🤮

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                No I didn’t bring up slavery at all, and equating paid jobs that do not exist until a company invests in a developing nation with slavery is disgustingly offensive.

                Developing nations are developing because of outside investment, and equating that to the rape of their lands and people that was chattel slavery is a monstrous thing to do.

                • girlfreddyOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, you did. What else would you call a sweatshop?

                  • SCB@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Sweatshops, while terrible working conditions, are paid labor and people seek out those jobs because the money is so much better than what they were doing before.

                    I am not pro sweatshop. International trade is so good for developing nations that even sweatshops are better than what they had. I’m all for treaties that straight up require investment capital to regulate that any foreign suppliers meet a certain level of safety and health regulations.

                    The reason that foreign investment in labor is profitable is not because of sweatshops but because of comparative advantage. An easy example is Mexico where the US dollar is currently worth 18 pesos, meaning you can pay a Mexican laborer 1/5th of what you pay an American and still are actually paying them more relative to their cost of living than an American.

                    This is true worldwide and is the essence of global trade, and it is impossible to call this a bad thing without just straight up saying you don’t give a shit about the livelihood of the Global South.

                    Comparative advantage is the reason that standards of living are rising worldwide. This investment spurs local capital growth, grows institutions to be inclusive instead of extractive, and in the long term encourages democratic reforms.

                    The US should, and does when our President isn’t a drooling imbecile, see global trade as a form of soft power and spreading of democracy.