You knew it was coming

Delegates from nearly 200 Paris Climate Accord signatories kicked off the U.N. climate summit in Egypt on Sunday with an agreement to discuss compensating poor nations for mounting damage linked to “global warming.”  According to the U.N. press release the agreement set “a constructive tone” for the COP27 summit in the seaside resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At COP26 last year in Glasgow, high-income nations, including the United States and the European Union blocked a proposal for a loss and damage financing body, instead supporting a three-year dialogue for funding discussions.  In other words, when push came to shove, E.U. kicked the can down the road.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told countries gathered at the start of the summit today that they face a stark choice: “Work together now to cut emissions or condemn future generations to climate catastrophe.”  But as usual, the world received no specific information defining what a “climate catastrophe” might look like, what its specific consequences might be, nor any specific time frames.  Additionally, nothing was supported with peer reviewed data, which was predictable considering we’ve been receiving these warnings that “climate catastrophe” is ten years away since Jimmy Carter was in office 50 years ago.

Speaking to the BBC, Scotland’s first minister called on countries in the developed world to recognize their responsibility to those nations already feeling the impact of climate change.  ” Climate change is having these impacts in the here and now and it is devastating… there are parts of the world where their ways of life are being completely changed.  Cultures and traditions are being seriously damaged, and the richest parts of the world have an obligation in my view to help those countries deal with the loss and damage, as well as continuing support for adaption and mitigation.  But one of the big problems in terms of trust here is the commitment to $100 billion a year in climate finance hasn’t yet been delivered.” 

~What is the world waiting for? ~

So, where did that $100 billion number come from?  Rewind to 2009 when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced to the U.N. and world that “The US is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries.” So, let’s be conservative and assume Hillary was only able to jointly mobilize a “serious & committed world” for half that amount, i.e., $50,000,000,000 per year.  If that were the case, then $650,000,000,000 would have been “mobilized” by now.

Now the fact that this money has never materialized (and never will) shouldn’t surprise us considering that Barack Obama president for the eight years following Hillary’s pledge (followed by John Kerry, the world leader in climate disinformation) and nothing, absolutely nothing has been done.  The bottom line?  The world was and still is waiting for the United States to pay the freight.

We’re told “cultures and traditions are being damaged,” and “there are parts of the world where their ways of life are being completely changed,” although we’re never told exactly how those ways of life are being completely changed, yet somehow the American taxpayer is responsible.  

However, there is much veracity to the contention that the Western World, and in particular the United States has drastically changed the way of life for people in these third world nations.  Due to Western industrialization, entrepreneurship, science and research, the people of the Third World are forced to live with things like the Internet, cell phones, WIFI, television, automobiles, airplanes, antibiotics, AIDS medication, COVID vaccines, economic growth, increased harvests due to improved agricultural techniques, new malaria fighting methods, lower infant death rates, etc., etc., etc., I could fill pages.

Those who’ve read congressional record regarding the “Inflation Reduction Act,” know much of it is directed towards subsidies for wind & solar that make fossil fuels artificially uncompetitive (thank you Joe Manchin) — with the operative word being “artificially.”  But the truly sad aspect of government subsidies is that they keep us from learning the lessons from bad decisions.

But this much I promise, we will never receive an accounting from this administration or the current democrat congress about how many American tax dollars are earmarked for the COP27 proposal to compensate developing nations.  However, on a more positive note, if the republicans win today – the U.N. isn’t going to see a dime at least until the next far left president & congress is elected.

Quote of the day: “The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.” –Thomas Sowell