By Jo Nova
Each year the World Bank hands out about $120 billion dollars in grants and loans to poor and middle income countries. But with 670 million people still without access to electricity, you’d think they’d have more important things to do than trying to slow storms in 100 years time.
However The World Bank is a pure creature of The Blob — dependent on Big Government handouts, and comfortably one or two degrees of separation away from any voters or accountability which makes it free to waste money on vainglorious trivia.
Unfortunately for the apparatchik the US is the world’s biggest funder of The World Bank, and President Trump has been giving them a hard time. A few months ago, Scott Bessent called on the World Bank to get back to their core mission — saying they’d lost their way trying to work in climate change, gender, and fashionable social issues. They do have a policy to end poverty by “accelerating gender equity” — if you can believe.
The world’s poor need roads, ports, clean water and reliable electricity, not a prize for participation in a global rain dance. If the loans have to fit in a sacred climate box, countries end up designing a show-case grid instead of the grid they need.
How many people died of cold or hunger who could have been saved if the World Bank helped them build a coal fired power plant instead of a wind farm or a gender equity conference?
World Bank to abandon goal to devote 45% of lending resources to climate change projects
Reuters
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in 2025 had ordered the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to return to their core missions of development and financial stability, arguing they had strayed too far into climate, gender and other areas opposed by the Trump administration. In April, he said the bank’s “myopic” focus on climate financing targets had to go.
It’s Trump verses The Blob:
Executive directors including France and 18 other shareholding countries had signed a letter last October endorsing the bank’s continued work on climate change, but the largest shareholder, the United States, declined to sign, along with executive directors representing Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while India and Japan abstained.
It’s unusual enough for Politico to use the words Trump and wins, in the same sentence.
Trump wins climate battle at the World Bank
By Arianna Skibel, Politico
Eliminating the spending target marks a victory for President Donald Trump, whose administration has described it as “distortionary” and “nonsensical.”
As its largest shareholder, the United States holds sway over World Bank decisions. And the administration spent months pressuring it to drop the climate finance target, which U.S. officials said must go despite other countries indicating their support.
Hallelujah. Every cent that goes to The Blob makes it stronger. The money buys experts, press releases, lawfare, and a dependent cheer squad.
h/t Another Ian