 The ongoing COP27 summit in Cairo has thrown up a number of questions about the very future of humanity itself. As delegates tried to thrash out a final agreement, what is clear is the failure of the capitalist system to address the global climate crisis. A huge part of this responsibility falls on the United States, which is historically the world's largest emitter of planet warming gases. US President Joe Biden was at the Sherman Shake for the conference and kept doubting what he called the leadership role played by the US. However, has that really been the case? What has been the role of the US in the climate crisis? Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News explains. I think that when we look at the United States climate policy, we can say it's failing on two levels. I mean, it's failing just on the level of transforming the political economy of the United States in such a way to be able to address and hold the globe below one and a half degrees of warming, but also it's failing to really address its own fair share of what would be required in order to be able to actually meet the burden of climate change around the world based on the reality that the United States alone and really the developing the first world quote unquote, the global North is responsible for the vast majority of global emissions. So you look at what's happening in the United States, for instance, on one hand, and you can see that there needs to be a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 here in the United States, excuse me, by 2030 here in the United States in order to be able to really do what the US needs to do in terms of its global share right now to hold the world below the crisis threshold of one and a half degrees of global warming. But based on their own admission, the climate legislation that's been passed by the Democrats will only get us 30 to 40% to where of that goal in 2030. So 30 to 40% reduction, you need to have a 50% reduction, and it has to happen in the next nine years, essentially, or eight years, essentially, and they're not on track, the government's own policies are not on track. And now in an era of divided divided government, it seems much less likely. And then on top of that, you have the broader issue of the sort of fair share, which was a huge issue in COP 27. And we can come back to that. But the United States is doing absolutely nothing as it concerns actually putting out climate finance and significant and a lot of the climate finance they're putting forward like with South Africa is actually loans. So it's almost like debt trap diplomacy, the way they're approaching it. But on top of that, you can see the United States is essentially playing a huge ideological role in undermining the idea of fair shares. John Kerry, who is the climate envoy of the US said, Well, everyone wants to get, you know, the whole $100 billion a year, which is what the rich countries are supposed to be giving developing countries in terms of money for adaptation and transformation. And obviously, it's not even close to that. I mean, it's, you know, what exactly it is is unclear, could be as little as 18 billion, even though there's a lot more that, you know, allegedly pledged, could be even lower than that, depending on how you look at the, you know, various different aspects of it. But that being said, John Kerry said, Well, I used to think when we got, you know, a 90 on a test, I did pretty well, well, they're not even doing 90%. But just the idea that, well, maybe we'll never make it to the threshold for what we should be paying. And that's actually even a low ball number that we may never even make it to the threshold of what we should be contributing based on our historic contribution to climate change. Then I think you can see that already the US is playing a huge role in trying to evade responsibility for what needs to happen. So both in terms of the contemporary reality in the United States, what does the US need to do with its own policies to hold the globe below one and a half degrees warming? It's not happening. They're at best 40% of where they need to be over the next eight years. And as it concerns really paying the cost for the share of global warming that the United States is responsible for, they are doing essentially almost nothing to make that possible, and using their own ideological apparatuses and bully pulpits in order to in order to really attack the idea that the countries of the global North do bear a disproportionate responsibility and thus have to bear a very disproportionate responsibility of the cost. The US is already seeing the impact of climate change through extreme weather events. However, there have been many instances of political deadlock on the issue and the approach to climate change is wildly divergent in various regions. How do we understand the domestic implications and approaches to climate change? You know, I think the sort of domestic conversation here in the United States is still very limited as it concerns the issue of climate change. I mean, first and foremost, I would say the maybe biggest error like sort of element of the conversation around climate change in the US is actually adaptation, not mitigation. And I think that speaks to how blinkered the reality is amongst the political elites in the United States about the scale of the challenge. But because the second major political party in the United States, the Republican Party, is a party of filled with climate deniers, it is basically essentially on record as being a climate denier. And let's say about one third of Democrats are essentially in no way shape or form committed to actually addressing climate. The only thing that people really can agree on is that, you know, cities that are sinking like the Miami's of the world, the New York cities of the world, that someone should do something to try to address them or try to save them. And that, you know, that kind of those kind of issues are important to address loss and damage issues, which of course they don't want to address in the developing world. But that being said, you know, that's really the crux of the national conversation. Now, in the regional level, there's more things happening and you have a different patchwork of conversations happening around the country as it concerns climate change in states like New York, where I am states like California, you know, there's no doubt that it's happening and there's a very robust conversation. For instance, here in New York state right now, a huge push is happening. And in fact, it looks like it may in fact have the votes in the state legislature to drastically improve publicly owned power utilities that are operating on 100% clean energy and offering it for very low prices. So you can see that there's a sort of an advanced edge of the conversation, but then you have places like, you know, the deep south of the United States, the Great Plains, other areas that are dominated by the far right, where there's just no discussion about anything at most about adaptation, but almost every elected official is a climate denier at the local state and federal level. So we have this very deeply fractured conversation, which is leaving us with a lot of half measures. For instance, the US is spending billions of dollars to incentivize the production of electric cars, but they are not spending the enough money to actually build out the infrastructure for electric cars to really operate on a wide scale all across the country. So the only places where they have the infrastructure are a handful of places where private industry does things, and then a handful of states that are willing to take action in California, New York, and the District of Columbia, and the like that are willing to take action on climate change. So it's a very fractured conversation. There's a lot of half measures emerging from the political process, but at the end of the day, we can see that the sum total of it all means that the actual goals that need to be met by certain time periods, 2030 and 2050, that's a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, and quote unquote net zero by 2050, I mean, there's almost no chance that they're going to be enacted. And a lot of that is because even though the majority of people in the country would probably like to see more happen, the anti-democratic political system makes it impossible to really assemble the correct majorities. The US role in climate change is inseparable from its role as an imperialist power. A report from 2020 noted that the Pentagon is the world's largest institutional user of petroleum, and its greenhouse gas emissions are more than even industrialized countries such as Portugal and Sweden. How do we see the US contribution to climate change in light of these facts? You know, I think that it's critical to understand that the United States approach to climate change from my point of view has really been completely deluded as it concerns the development realities of the world. I mean, as the president of Nigeria pointed out specifically at COP 27, Africa for instance has some of the lowest emissions. It's the closest to net zero emissions and has the largest number of countries of any continent that have actually met the social development goals, the UN SDG for climate, but yet and still Africa is being pushed aggressively to actually take the lead in reducing emissions, which in many ways means in, you know, essentially baking poverty into the reality of these countries. I mean, the reality is most of the poor countries are really in what you could call a climate deficit, because not only has their contribution over time been so low, basically nothing, but even their current contemporary emissions are so low, they could grow their emissions significantly, significantly, really even over the next 50 or 60 years and still actually not be playing a role in holding the world back from actually meeting the goal of one and a half degrees Celsius warming or no more than that. And so you can see that what the United States is doing, and we're talking about DRC for instance, where they are trying to sell oil blocks in order to generate revenue for the country. And when the Secretary of State Blinken was there, when John Kerry also spoke about this issue, they were imploring Congo to do nothing. The Congolese government, whatever criticisms one may make, we're saying, well, what about all the people living in poverty in our country? What are you supposed to do about that? The US presents no money, no agenda, no nothing to help the people of Congo. You can look at the same issue in South Africa, the so-called majorly touted deal of COP 27, the reality is it could throw 110,000 miners, coal miners out of work with no plan at all whatsoever to mitigate these terrible impacts on mining communities there in South Africa. And on top of that, this eight and a half billion dollar package, which is primarily in loan, so will make South Africa even more deeply in debt, which is a multi-layered issue there too, because most of South Africa's existing debt is only in rand, their own currency. This would probably be in dollars or in euros. So it's significantly unfavorable in terms of what it does to the debt load of South Africa, in addition to throwing 110,000 people out of work with no plan for how they're actually going to sustain themselves. But it also sends all the money to private corporations and guts the public sector, which of course will make it harder for South Africa to do its own development tasks and address issues like the 50% unemployment in their country. So you've got the United States that is essentially refusing to recognize its own fair share, refusing to do its own fair share, that in the context of the war on Russia has openly and willingly made it much easier for the fossil fuel industry to grow, also still continuing to insist that these developing nations that have almost no emissions, both historically and contemporarily, are not allowed to pursue their own development past because that will be deemed to be against the issue of sustainability. So they're looking to balance the crisis on the backs of those who are not only the least responsible, not both historically and contemporarily, but those who have the least means and least ability to actually address the issues.