The ambit claims know no bounds. Who else would ask for $89,000,000,000,000? If the evil “more developed” nations pay for their carbon sins, the bill for those 1.3 billion people works out at $70,000 per person by 2030 (babies included).* When the target is 89,000 billion dollars, anything the Global Saviours get, can be painted as “not enough”. (It’s never enough). A trillion in funds is a “tiny”, “insufficient” amount that is “barely adequate”. Compliant journalists will print those headlines. The crowd will pay the money and feel guilty they are not paying more.
Speaking of the loot, the world’s GDP is currently $70 trillion, so asking for $89 trillion is a claim on 8% of all the money turned over in the world economy for a decade and a half. Handsome!
There is a grand array of climate junkets for Global Worriers this year. A gala of red-carpet events culminating in Paris, from November 30 to December 11. The wheeling and dealing is on right now, months ahead — and though they talk about the importance of Paris, I expect that Paris is mostly the cabaret show (like UNFCCC event in Bali that I went to), and it’s the deals being hammered out right now that matter (so write to your Austrlian M.P. today. And can we get links to lists for the politicians of the US, UK, EU, NZ…) h/t Rereke
This is a gambit by the highest orders of bureaucratic power in the West for more power, more money, and virtually no accountability — they’re trying to change the global weather fergoodnesssake. There will always be storms, floods and droughts somewhere in the world. This is not so much about renewable energy as about a renewable cash cow. For people who don’t want to compete in the world of hard business but quite like to be treated as if they were a glorious CEO, this is not bad in the global gravy stakes. There are ego-massaging press conferences, tax deductible trips to Rio, five star hotels, and a “hero” status among the passionate flock of useful idiots.
Part of the trick for such a grand grab is the invisibility of the bill. The bureaucrats sneak silently into bank accounts around the world, a dollar here and a dollar there. Funds come from taxpayers and then through higher electricity, fuel and grocery bills, the money flows from seniors, retired folk, children and the unemployed. Through loans issued by governments and central banks, the payments come through silent inflation, as the value of purchasing power and currencies fall. The payments are almost never labeled. No product is ever produced that needs to be delivered. No one gets a bill in the mail to change the weather.
If they did, there would be riots in the streets.
Send more money, $89 trillion more.
Mobilizing the Billions and Trillions for Climate Finance
April 18, 2015:
“Over the next 15 years, the global economy will require an estimated $89 trillion in infrastructure investments across cities, energy, and land-use systems, and $4.1 trillion in incremental investment for the low-carbon transition to keep within the internationally agreed limit of a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise.”
- Sessions throughout the 2015 IMF/World Bank Group Spring Meetings brought together voices from all areas of the economy – government, investment, business and civil society – to discuss how to mobilize the trillions of dollars needed globally to address climate change.
- Putting a price on carbon and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies are two ways governments can free up and increase public funds. Other sessions looked at the roles development banks and central banks can play in encouraging greater investment in low-carbon growth.
With a straight face yesterday the World Bank issued a press release talking about 1.1 billion people without electricity and 2.9 billion people reliant on wood and dung for cooking fuel. These are the people who desperately need the cheapest electricity (coal, coal and coal). Whole forests are being razed for dinner, don’t environmentalists want to stop that? Not as much as they want to feed the renewables industry, apparently.
Having paid the pean to the poor, the bureaucrats slide in the need for gold-plated electricity sources like solar and wind, which make no sense for most of the poor, nor as a way to reduce CO2, and never as a way to change the climate. (See why even the Google Engineers gave up on renewables and why the US cut its CO2 emissions by ignoring the Greens.) By any economic or environmental measure, the point of renewables is makes no sense. Could it be that they are (and will be for decades to come) 99% dependent on big-government bureaucrats — guaranteed lobbyists for more big-government? Look at the way 97% of Australian renewables investment dried up with the subsidies became less certain. The sums are staggering — one hundred billion dollars was wasted in the EU on mismanagement of renewables. At it’s peak, nearly a billion dollars a day was being invested in renewable energy.
New Report Finds World Progressing on Sustainable Energy Goals But Still Far From Finish Line
The report is the second in a series that tracks the world’s progress toward SE4All’s three goals of universal energy access, doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix – all to be met by 2030. While the first edition, released in 2013, measured progress between 1990 and 2010, this edition focuses on 2010 to 2012.
In that two-year period, the number of people without access to electricity declined from 1.2 billion to 1.1 billion, a rate of progress much faster than the 1990-2010 period. In total 222 million people gained access to electricity during this period, higher than the population increase of 138 million people. These gains were concentrated in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and mainly in urban areas. The global electrification rate increased from 83 percent in 2010 to 85 percent in 2012.
But there was less progress on access to clean cooking fuel with 2.9 billion people still using biomass fuels like wood and dung – most of this population clustered in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and eastern Asia.
On the positive side, the share of modern renewable energy (from sources including hydro, solar and wind energy) grew rapidly at 4 percent a year during the tracking period. Modern renewables made up 8.8 percent of total global energy consumption in 2012. Still, to meet the 2030 SE4All objective, the annual growth rate for renewable energy needs to be closer to 7.5 percent.
*For comparison, at the peak of it’s “climate agenda” The Australian Labor Party had plans to spend $60,000 per Australian by 2050).
h/t to Michael.