The global climate conference meeting in Madrid, stuffily known as the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25), is over—and so is the developing nations’ hope of sucking up hundreds of billions of dollars from the developed nations’ economies.
While many people are seriously concerned about the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the efforts to fight that increase have often turned into demands for a huge income transfer scheme.
That’s one important reason why 192 countries were on board with the Paris climate agreement—and why President Donald Trump opposed it and has started the process of removing the United States.
In the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting, developed countries agreed to contribute $100 billion annually to the Green Climate Fund.
Did I mention that the $100 billion idea was proposed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
Most of that money would have been redistributed to developing countries with the goal of helping them mitigate the long-term effects of climate change.
During the 2015 Paris climate meeting, the group developed a “Roadmap to $100 billion” to give the developed economies a little shove in meeting their commitments.
But as is so often the case in the climate change movement, talk is cheap, while subsidies—or what Reason’s Ronald Bailey refers to as “climate reparations from rich nations”—are not.
In the decade since Copenhagen, countries have pledged a total—not annually, but a total—of $10.3 billion, but they have actually transferred only $3.5 billion.
That would be $3.5 billion transferred out of a cumulative total of $1 trillion agreed to—and the rent seekers* ARE NOT happy!
Seriously, how much graft, new palaces, and secret, offshore bank account deposits can corrupt governments fund with a measly $3.5 billion?
But the rent seekers aren’t giving up. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Developing countries need more than $4.4 trillion from 2020 through 2030 to implement measures under the Paris accord.”
Based on the past decade’s contributions, reaching that goal appears to be, um … doubtful. So does the group’s carbon-reduction goals.
Recall that the world media gushed over China’s signing the Paris agreement. Yet the Journal writes, “China, the top [carbon] emitter globally, is adding more coal-fired plants than the rest of the world combined, while also building them internationally.”
And that’s the problem. The United States is castigated for not being on the climate-agreement bandwagon, even though it has dramatically reduced its carbon emissions over the past decade. Yet many of the agreement’s signers miss their carbon-reduction and income transfer goals, but are praised for their “cheap talk.”
*Investopedia: Rent seeking is an economic concept that occurs when an entity seeks to gain added wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity.
December 17, 2019