“Foreign
Operations” appropriation bills now working their way through Congress supposedly
provide funding to “advance U.S. diplomatic priorities overseas,” “increase
global security,” and continue “life-saving global health and humanitarian
assistance programs for the world’s most vulnerable populations.”
The
bills include handsome funding for the World Bank and other so-called Multilateral
Development Banks: some $1.8 billion in total. The United States is by far the World
Bank Group’s largest donor, and a major funder of four
other MDBs: the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
In
recent years, these banks have embraced manmade climate change alarmism as a
key foundation for their lending policies. In particular, they refuse to fund
the development of electric power generation via fossil fuels – thereby
starving impoverished nations and families of desperately needed electricity.
Instead,
the MDBs are pouring money into solar and wind power schemes that simply cannot
produce affordable, reliable electricity on a large enough scale to help raise
their client countries out of poverty.
In
fact, they are ramping up their green madness. The five just-named MDBs, along
with the European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank, recently
released a joint report
on what they call “climate finance” – which last year jumped a whopping 30% – to
a staggering $34 billion dollars!
With
over $13 billion in its coffers, the World Bank has the lion’s share of this
green oppression money. But every one of these banks has greatly increased its
climate focus, some even doubling it.
That
is not just appalling. It is immoral and contrary to the supposed purposes of
the appropriation bills. The MDBs have become anti-development banks, anti-vulnerable
people banks. Their virtue-asserting “climate finance” terminology is more accurately
described as climate callousness.
These
tens of billions of dollars should help support projects that provide real,
affordable, dependable power for the nearly 1.2 billion people around the world
who still do not have electricity. Another 2 billion have electrical power only
sporadically and unpredictably. In India alone, almost as many people as live
in the USA still lack electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 700 million
people (the population of Europe) rarely or never have electricity, and still
cook and heat with wood, charcoal, and animal dung.
Every year, hundreds of millions become
ill and 5 million die of lung and intestinal diseases from inhaling pollutants
from open fires, and from lack of clean water, refrigeration and bacteria-free
food. Largely because their nations lack energy to power modern economies, nearly
3 billion survive on a few dollars per day, and more millions die every year
from preventable or curable diseases.
But the anti-development banks simply
double down on their lethal policies. Their new report asserts: “The joint
methodology for tracking climate change mitigation finance recognizes the
importance of long-term structural changes such as the shift in energy
production to renewable energy technologies, and the modal shift to low-carbon
modes of transport.”
They’ve
served notice that they stopped financing coal-fired
power in 2010. Now they intend to stop financing oil and gas exploration
by poor countries, and instead will push for total “decarbonization.”
Just like that. Fossil fuels gone from
developing nation energy funding. No discussion. No vote. No actual evidence
for climate cataclysms. No recourse. Just a policy decision by unelected,
unaccountable bureaucrats – supported by self-serving pressure groups,
politicians and “green” energy companies.
These bankers, pols and activists couldn’t
even run their own operations (or their homes) on sporadic, unpredictable, 14/4/265
wind and solar power. The companies couldn’t even manufacture their wind
turbines and solar panels. Yet they demand that entire developing nations
accept whatever jobs, medical facilities, schools, homes and living standards
can be supported by this fairy tale energy.
It is an obscene global tragedy. These MDB
policies condemn billions to poverty and millions to slow, agonizing death.
America should no longer support any of this. No decent country should.
Thankfully for the sidelined nations, Chinese
banks have begun helping to finance coal- and gas-fired power in Asia and
Africa. In the process, they have gained tremendous political and strategic leverage,
at the expense of the United States, Europe and MDBs. Other banks can and
should do likewise.
All developing countries should avoid
doing what rich nations are doing now that they are rich. Instead, they should do what rich nations did to become rich. They should remember that
wealthy industrialized countries did not have MDBs to help them. They created
institutions to finance the power generation and factories that created the
jobs, middle classes, health and prosperity that paid for it all – and far
more.
China, India and other emerging economies are
doing the same thing. They are effectively telling the World Bank and other
MDBs: “Get lost. We don’t need your funding, with all your anti-development
strings. You eco-imperialist banks and activists will not hold us back any
longer. We are going to chart our own destiny and take our rightful places among
Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.”
The MDBs claim their policies reflect
Paris Climate Treaty vision of “making financial flows consistent with low
greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” – by coordinating
climate “mitigation” (prevention) and “adaptation” programs. This moral
preening ignores critical realities.
To be resilient in the face of climate
change (natural or manmade), countries must be wealthy and technologically
advanced. That is impossible with existing or foreseeable renewable energy on
scales required to replace today’s fossil fuel energy and power up countries that
are still in the dark ages – especially if the banks and their allies remain
opposed to nuclear (and hydroelectric) power.
Moreover,
the obsessive, unbending focus on alleged fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos ignores
the enormous social, economic, health and other benefits that fossil fuels have
bestowed on humanity over the past 150 years. It ignores the ways actual
temperature and weather observations have been revised, “homogenized” and
exaggerated to reflect alarmist narratives and computer models.
It
ignores the unsustainable amounts
of metals, hydrocarbons, concrete, and especially scenic and habitat land that
would be required to convert the world to wind, solar, battery and biofuel
power. And for what?
At
this point, there is no convincing evidence (observations instead of models) demonstrating
that carbon dioxide levels drive climate and weather; today’s temperatures,
polar ice, sea level rise, storms or droughts are dangerously or profoundly unprecedented;
humans can control all of this by limiting CO2 and other greenhouse gas
emissions; or anything on the horizon can replace fossil fuels anytime soon.
Indeed,
on what basis was it decreed that a crisis or tipping point would be reached if
Earth experienced 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 Fahrenheit) in higher
average global temperatures since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended and the
modern industrial age began? Where is the real-world evidence?
For
MDBs to remain focused on alleged climate and weather chaos, mostly in the
distant future – while ignoring today’s massive, horrendous poverty, disease,
malnutrition and death – is morally depraved.
President Trump, Senate Majority Leader
McConnell, House Speaker Ryan and Secretary of State Pompeo need to end the
insanity and manslaughter. They need to give this money to agencies and
programs that will support fossil fuels and real life-saving actions for the
world’s most vulnerable people.
Congress
and the White House are a short trek from the World Bank headquarters. They
should have no trouble delivering the message – and making it resonate with the
other Multilateral Development Banks.
If
Congress isn’t up to the task, perhaps Mr. Trump can redirect some of this
money – or other billions that are being wasted on climate alarmism and
renewable energy fantasies.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on
energy, climate change and economic development. David Wojick is an independent
analyst specializing in science and logic in public policy.
My Comments:
I am not an advocate of taxing Americans to provide economic aid to other nations. But if you are going to do this, do it so that you maximize raising their standard of living and their productivity so that they will make better trading partners and become better people in the future. The Multilateral Development Bank policies to prevent people of the underdeveloped nations from having reliable power are contrary to good policy and a sad, sad waste of the American taxpayers' money.
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