US & Them - Josh 348

 

Business Standard reports that the US are stalling on the $100 Billion Climate Finance:

The US also asked that the economic reality at present should be taken into consideration, while asking countries to contribute to the climate funds.

H/t The GWPF 

Cartoons by Josh

Comments

[Dung]

At last Obama shows some sense! ups no it was Uncle Sam.

[Speed]

Bjorn Lomborg in today's Wall Street Journal ...

This Child Doesn’t Need a Solar Panel

Spending billions of dollars on climate-related aid in countries that need help with tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition.

[ ... ]

Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, recently told the Guardian (U.K.) newspaper that the $100 billion figure “was picked out of the air at Copenhagen” in an attempt to rescue a last-minute deal. Yet achieving that arbitrary goal is now seen as fundamental to the success of the Paris summit.

This is deeply troubling because aid is being diverted to climate-related matters at the expense of improved public health, education and economic development.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/this-child-doesnt-need-a-solar-panel-1445466967

[Rud Istvan]

Slight correction: $100 billion per yearto the Green Climate Fund.

[Alan the Brit]

And we know that Copenhagen failed partly as a result of Climategate, but mostly because the developing countries didn't want the developed countries to know how they were going to spend that $100 billion a year, in which rich people in porr countries would get richer, & poor people would see very little of that wealth! It's all about a global benefits system & wealth redistribution!

[Phillip Bratby]

$100 billion or $100 billion/year. Details like this will only confuse the politicians. Anyway, when they are used to talking in $trillions, what's a few $100 billions?

[golf charlie]

But the aspirational leaders of developing nations only pretended to care, about the non existent global warming, to claim their share of $100 billion per year. What a waste of all that jet fuel, flying around the world to taxpayer funded schmoozefest parties.

Truly scandalous.

No polar bears died as a result of making this scam, though "climate scientists" face extinction.

[TinyCO2]

I can understand the confusion over whether CAGW is real or not but the politics and the 'solutions' are fairly simple issues. Everyone knows that the renewables don't work and throwing billions at something that's only good for a photocall. When it comes to signing on the dotted line, even the most green eyed politcian balks. I don't mind stingy people but people who try to shame others about generosity and then welsh on the deal really disgust me.

Like all the best political cartoons, Josh gets to the bottom of the issue with style.

[Robin Guenier]

In any case see this: LINK

As I said in a comment on Paul's previous post, perhaps the developing countries should be paying compensation to the West.

[golf charlie]

Has the US President been swayed by his faith in the Pope's ability to get Catholics to come up with $100 billion per year?

It is one thing to encourage emotional blackmail, but the IPCC's top blackmailers are losing their Midas touch. If the UN stopped encouraging and funding the IPCC's blackmailers in the first place, many of these crimes against humanity would not happen.

[Dung]

TinyCO2

When it comes to signing on the dotted line Cameron will not baulk at giving away billions from our taxes if it makes him feel good.

[Pcar]

Bjorn's article is paywalled. For your convenience:

This Child Doesn’t Need a Solar Panel
Spending billions of dollars on climate-related aid in countries that need help with tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition.

By BJORN LOMBORG
Oct. 21, 2015 6:36 p.m. ET

In the run-up to the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, rich countries and development organizations are scrambling to join the fashionable ranks of “climate aid” donors. This effectively means telling the world’s worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel. It is terrible news.

On Oct. 9, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim pledged a one-third increase in the bank’s direct climate-related financing, bringing the bank’s annual total to an estimated $29 billion by 2020. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to match President Obama’s promised $3 billion in aid to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Meanwhile, the U.K is diverting $8.9 billion from its overseas aid budget to climate-related aid over the next five years, and France is promising $5.6 billion annually by 2020, up from $3.4 billion today. The African Development Bank is planning to triple its climate-related investments to more than $5 billion a year by 2020, representing 40% of its total portfolio.

All these pledges had their genesis in the chaos of the Copenhagen climate summit six years ago, when developed nations made a rash promise to spend $100 billion a year on “climate finance” for the world’s poor by 2020. Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, recently told the Guardian (U.K.) newspaper that the $100 billion figure “was picked out of the air at Copenhagen” in an attempt to rescue a last-minute deal. Yet achieving that arbitrary goal is now seen as fundamental to the success of the Paris summit.

This is deeply troubling because aid is being diverted to climate-related matters at the expense of improved public health, education and economic development. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has analyzed about 70% of total global development aid and found that about one in four of those dollars goes to climate-related aid.

In a world in which malnourishment continues to claim at least 1.4 million children’s lives each year, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, and 2.6 billion lack clean drinking water and sanitation, this growing emphasis on climate aid is immoral.

Not surprisingly, in an online U.N. survey of more than eight million people from around the globe, respondents from the world’s poorest countries rank “action taken on climate change” dead last out of 16 categories when asked “What matters most to you?” Top priorities are “a good education,” “better health care, “better job opportunities,” “an honest and responsive government,” and “affordable, nutritious food.”

According to a recent paper by Neha Raykar and Ramanan Laxminarayan of the Public Health Foundation of India, just $570 million a year—or 0.57% of the $100 billion climate-finance goal—spent on direct malaria-prevention policies like mosquito nets would reduce malaria deaths by 50% by 2025, saving an estimated 300,000 lives a year.

Providing the world’s most deprived countries with solar panels instead of better health care or education is inexcusable self-indulgence. Green energy sources may be good to keep on a single light or to charge a cellphone. But they are largely useless for tackling the main power challenges for the world’s poor.

According to the World Health Organization, three billion people suffer from the effects of indoor air pollution because they burn wood, coal or dung to cook. These people need access to affordable, reliable electricity today. Yet too often clean alternatives, because they aren’t considered “renewable,” aren’t receiving the funding they deserve.

A 2014 study by the Center for Global Development found that “more than 60 million additional people in poor nations could gain access to electricity if the Overseas Private Investment Corporation”—the U.S. government’s development finance institution—“were allowed to invest in natural gas projects, not just renewables.”

Addressing global warming effectively will require long-term innovation that will make green energy affordable for everyone. Rich countries are in a rush to appear green and generous, and recipient countries are jostling to make sure they receive the funds. But the truth is that climate aid isn’t where rich countries can help the most, and it isn’t what the world’s poorest want or need.

Mr. Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, is the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Cambridge Press, 2001) and “Cool It” ( Knopf, 2007).

(c) wsj.com 2015

[golf charlie]

Pcar, with all this climate aid money being handed out, all leaders in developing countries will be able to have full climate control as standard on their luxury European limousines. This will enable their wives and chauffers to travel in the climate of their own choice, even if they are a metre apart.

[Curious George]

Greenpeace and IPCC should contribute 97% of it.

[KNR]

Oddly the whole 100 billion idea is not bad thing , from a sceptics point of view.
Because there is no way in hell that those countries expected too, and that does no included China , are going to sign up to 100 billion a year hand-out . Because its electoral suicide for any politician that signs up for it as it makes it very clear to the public that a part of the whole 'climate doom ' game is little more than a cash shake down .

So let them push it for all they are worth, after all way stop your enemy from shooting themselves in the foot ?

[golf charlie]

Imagine how useful it would have been if major world banks had helped finance fossil fuel energy in some of these developing countries. Some of them by now would have developed, and would not be needing cash injections from the rest of the world.

[golf charlie]

Got to think about where the $100 billion is coming from.

Not China, too sensible. Ditto Russia, and oil rich Arab States.

Not Africa, they are all still developing. Ditto South America, Central America and most of Asia.

EU, fully committed to global warming (even though no one was ever asked) but most of Europe has learned the Gallic shrug, leaving UK, Germany and Scandanavia, the places most likely to benefit from global warming, should it ever happen.

USA, fully committed to $100 billion until the thought of an election, and the cost of the World Cup, and now not so sure

Canada and Australia, new leaders fully committed to global warming. Excellent! Canada could now do well out of tar sands, but won't have any spare cash otherwise, and Australia has built the water desalination plants it can't afford and doesn't need.

This leaves the South Pole Base on Antarctica, to come up with the $100 billion, because the UK has lost it's patience, the Germans are about to, and the Scandanavians have some buried fermenting fish to worry about if the permafrost freezes more solid, and some lethal toxic gas explosions for the rest of Europe to worry about if the permafrost thaws.

Maybe the Vatican Bank could rustle up some loaves and fishes for the poor, and speed up some of the sexual abuse compensation claims, as they know where to find the most vulnerable in society.

[esmiff]

There is one tiny little problem with 3rd world nations claiming compensation for damage due to climate change. According to a previous agreement,they will have to prove it was caused by human created CO2, not natural causes.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !

LOL !!

[kim]

The Chinese covered their chagrin at the failure of the shakedown in Kobenhaven by pretending outrage at the neo-colonial chicanery of one Obama. I expect he'll make a similar fool of himself this time at the Masque of Paris. And, I expect snow for the Bore, er, Gore.
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[golf charlie]

kim, French Air Traffic Controllers do not like to miss out on a chance of free publicity.......

It would be poetic justice if climateers couldn't fly to a climate change party. Obviously Air Traffic Controllers do have an interest in preserving air travel for the masses, not just privileged climateers. They could get the baggage handlers to lose a few hundred suitcases on a runway or something, to create a picket fence line that aircraft can't cross, and would be beyond the reach of Les Gendarmes to clear up.

An unpopular French Premier wouldn't dream of breaking a strike.

[Jimmy Haigh]

Economic reality? Like being something like $20 Trillion in debt? A mere trifle...

[esmiff]

Maybe I should have written 'a previous proposed agreement'.

[Ruth Dixon]

Josh's portrayal of the three-stone cooking fire is very accurate (though likely the person stirring the pot would be female!) - as used by many of the three billion people who rely on burning wood and other 'biomass' for cooking.

[golf charlie]

Ruth Dixon, 3billion people relying on 3 stones to cook. Stone age technology never ended, and will be preserved for eternity by climate science.

[kim]

gc, a convenient excuse now isn't it? The horrible irony, the distant poor suffer for the immediate, but unnecessary, guilt.

This is pathological, and likely will not stand.
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