Britain would be wrong to pay climate change reparations

Is it right that Britain should pay £1.5 billion for developing countries to adapt to floods, cyclones and rising sea levels as Rishi Sunak has announced at Cop27? Absolutely. That is what aid money is for: to help countries cope with natural disasters. If you can spend some of this money in advance of those disasters so that these countries might better be able to cope with them when they do occur, then so much the better.

Would Britain be right, on the other hand, to pay reparations to developing countries on the basis that the industrial revolution started in Britain and we, therefore, have high historic carbon emissions? Absolutely not, and for several reasons. Firstly, there is no reason to apologise for the industrial revolution, which, for all the problems it has brought with pollution and so on, has enriched the entire world.

Secondly, while Britain might have started intensive coal-burning ahead of anyone else, our cumulative emissions have long since been overtaken by other countries.