Climate Extraction: The Sixteen Stabs
Climate action, as presently constituted, is a mechanism for transferring wealth from South to North. This is not accident. This is not oversight. This is design.
The North accumulated capital through fossil fuels. It still extracts wealth. The method changed. The extraction did not. Now it taxes the South. That’s the North’s Inconvenient Truth.
Climate action, as presently constituted, is a mechanism for transferring wealth from South to North. This is not accident. This is not oversight. This is design.
The South must decarbonise. The South must adapt. The South must survive. But it cannot do any of these without borrowing from the North. Every borrowing mechanism is structured to extract maximum wealth.
The Sixteen Extraction Mechanisms:
Adaptation costs. The South borrows to survive climate impacts it did not cause. Dykes. Irrigation. Early warning systems. These are survival expenditures. Money arrives with debt structures and conditionality attached.
Transition constraints. The South must decarbonise whilst the North outsourced its emissions-intensive manufacturing. The South pays premium prices for renewable technology it cannot develop domestically.
Carbon tax extraction. The North imposes carbon pricing on the South whilst Northern corporations have already transitioned to profitable renewables. The South must pay carbon taxes on remaining coal-based industry (which it cannot afford to replace). Carbon credit markets and offset schemes generate revenue flowing north. The South must buy expensive carbon credits from Northern corporations to finance its energy transition.
Consultant machinery. Northern professionals consume 20 to 40 percent of project budgets designing the policies that impoverish the South.
Currency chicanery. Austerity constraints produce predictable devaluation. The South must sell twice as much to pay the same dollar-denominated debt.
Interest rate ratchet. Northern central banks set global monetary conditions for Northern circumstances. The South absorbs capital flight and expensive borrowing.
Infrastructure privatisation. Essential services are sold to Northern corporations. Prices rise sharply. Profit flows north. The poor lose access. Development stalls.
Trade tariffs and subsidies. The North maintains barriers against Southern exports whilst flooding Southern markets with subsidised Northern goods. Southern agriculture collapses. Manufacturing is strangled. The South becomes import-dependent.
Political capture. Governments are installed through electoral interference. Resistance is destabilised. Compliance is ensured.
Policy diktats. The North imposes agricultural and economic policy through loan conditionality. Sri Lanka banned chemical fertilisers. Agricultural yields collapsed. Food production crashed. Economy decimated. The South became import-dependent. It now exports raw materials at depressed prices to buy survival goods.
Commodity price manipulation. The North controls global futures markets. Southern exports of raw commodities face price crashes engineered through financial speculation. The South’s currency collapses. Northern trading houses profit from volatility.
Geopolitical destabilisation. The North sponsors political unrest. Civil wars. Proxy conflicts. Infrastructure is destroyed. Capital flees. The South must borrow more to rebuild at higher rates.
War threats. Sabre-rattling forces the South to divert development budgets to military defence. Healthcare collapses. Education crumbles. Northern defence contractors profit.
Market crashes. Financial contagion spreads from North to South. Capital flees instantly. Banks collapse. Savings evaporate. Recovery requires more borrowing at punishing rates.
Pandemics. Supply chain collapse. Economic paralysis. The North’s pharmaceuticals become extraction tools. The South pays premium prices. Healthcare systems collapse. Debt spirals accelerate.
And counting. Debt trap diplomacy forcing surrender of strategic assets. Intellectual property regimes blocking technology transfer. Brain drain extracting human capital. Land grabbing for export crops. Resource extraction through colonial concessions. Media and narrative control. The extraction machinery contains more mechanisms than listed here. Each transfers wealth from South to North. Each operates through the language of technical necessity. Fiscal discipline. Market efficiency. Democratic reform. The language obscures the material reality: systematic wealth transfer from South to North.
They interlock. They reinforce. They ensure no exit. The South cannot escape one without facing the rest. Borrowed capital at punishing rates. Consultant fees consuming half the money. Currency engineered to collapse. Interest rates set in Washington and Frankfurt. Essential services privatised. Trade barriers strangling development. Governments installed to ensure compliance. Productive capacity destroyed through policy diktats. Commodity prices manipulated. Geopolitical chaos manufactured. War threats draining resources. Financial contagion engineered. Pandemics weaponised.
This is not cooperation. Not partnership. Not burden-sharing.
This is extraction. This is the Imperial Tax the South is forced to pay the North.
The North built its wealth on coal. It still extracts through finance. The mechanism changed. The plunder did not.
This is design.