I’ve made the case in previous columns that the climate change movement is mostly a climate change hustle. Let’s be real. None of this is about changing the temperature of the Earth. Even the most naive environmental activist can’t really believe that building windmills and driving Teslas is going to cool the planet.
This is all about money. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of government handouts.
That was never more blatantly transparent than at this year’s sham COP 27 climate conference in Egypt, which was attended by more than 20,000 delegates and activists from more than 100 countries. The only agreement that the delegates could reach was a hollow “commitment” from the rich Western nations — by that they mean the United States — to give “reparation” money to the poor nations of the world.
If you’ve never heard of this loony concept before, the theory is that America owes the rest of the world money for burning fossil fuels over the last hundred or so years.
Huh? These were the fossil fuels that provided America with the energy to save humanity from fascism and communism during World War I, World War II and the Cold War. These energy sources are what have powered the industrial age, bringing light, heat and air conditioning. And they have powered our infrastructure, factories, an abundant food supply and a technology revolution. Add to that our drugs and vaccines, which have saved many hundreds of millions of lives globally.
It was the fossil fuel energy revolution of the last century that supplied America with the wealth and financial resources to provide some half a trillion dollars of disaster and foreign aid to seemingly every area of the rest of the world. And now, President Joe Biden’s dunces are agreeing with foreigners that we owe them money?
America should be getting reparation payments. Not the other way around.
Oh, and did I mention that China and India skipped out on the conference this year? These are by far the two largest polluting nations, and they want no part of this global handshake “agreement.” This would be like celebrating that we have reached a peace agreement during World War II, except the bad news is that Germany and Japan aren’t on board.
The sliver of good news here is that Republicans are about to run the House of Representatives, and one of their first policy declarations will be to declare we are not sending a penny of climate foreign aid to other nations when we have mammoth problems here to solve at home.
It’s almost sinister that at a time when many third-world countries lack basic health care, adequate food production, clean water, affordable/reliable electric power and basic schooling for the young (especially girls), the European and American delegation is giving sermons on the dangers of climate change. With a fraction of the money the climate fanatics want to spend on green energy, the world could save millions of lives simply by ensuring the poor have access to clean drinking water and save millions of lives over the decades to come.
What all of this means is that the U.S. is under no moral or legal obligation to pay reparations to any nation. The U.S. is running a $1.2 trillion budget deficit, so there is no extra money in the bank vaults to spend right now on foreign aid. Perhaps when we’ve balanced the budget and we have surpluses.
That would be around the third Wednesday of never.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government is Devouring our Economy.”
The United States is probably the cleanest of the industrial nations on earth yet we are under a constant barrage by climate zealots that we aren’t doing enough, doing our ‘fair share’! Worse is the hypocracy of those who lecture us on what we should do while ignoring their own advice: Al Gore and John Kerry seem to relish being above the ordinary restrictions they wish others to follow. Then there’s that innocent appearing Greta Thunberg whose mission is not to save the world from climate change, a phenomenon that has occurred for billions of years but to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism which had never worked successfully where it has been tried. When these activists actually go after the real poluters in the world, China, India, et al, they might gain some credibility with me!
Not just that. BUT EVEN WITH all those other nations “CLAIMING TO be part of XYZ climate accords”, while TRUMP PULLED US OUT, we STILL REDUCED OUR emissions, while EVERY DAMN OTHER nation, especially china, INCREASED THEIRS..
IF pot a is less than it used to be, WHILE POT B, C, D etc is MORE.. IT MATTERS NOT how much of a reduction WE make…
Maybe if the American taxpayers sent them a bill for all the food, technology, medical and military protection and energy they received free of charge since WWII they would shut their yaps or pay us back, trillions more than any environMENTAL damages owed. Perhaps we should have left Europe looking like Kiev does today, or treated them like Russia now treats Ukraine. Conquer and keep instead of free and protect. Believe me, if they want the USA to revert back to the jungle where only the strongest survive, it won’t be pretty for the ingrate Internationalists who survive as whole nations only because the good people of the USA wills it to be so, something so good you cannot put a price upon.
Other than food, clean water and medicine, most third would do not want to be influenced by the U.S.A.
They will take whatever we give them, but as soon as we leave they go to doing things their own way.
exactly. HOW MANY Billions in foreign aid, have we sent to damn near every nation in Africa, South/central America, Europe etc?? THEY ARE the ones who owe US Reparations!
The Brit and Germans were burning far more coal to power their Industrial Revolutions than we Americans were, starting in the early1800s. The US didn’t overtake them until the late 1800s/early 1900s. Why aren’t the Euros on the hook as the first perpetrators of “climate change”?
Sixty years ago, the average longevity of Africans south of the Sahara was 35. Today, it is nearly double. That is due to all sorts of modernization. America should plead guilty for that.
This is why we should have never gotten INTO the ‘giving foreign aid’ ballony in the get go…