Tilak K. Doshi
The recent spate of reports in the media illustrates well how the globalist policy agenda of the climate industrial complex has captured key international institutions and distorted their original organizational goals. From their original broad, laudable purpose of serving the well-being of their constituents, these institutions have been subverted over the years to serve the persistent pseudoscientific claims of climate alarmists.
Corruption in global institutions has in turn led to an increasingly visible backlash. The incoming Trump administration is likely to be openly skeptical of the so-called climate crisis narrative and intend to withdraw from the United Nations Paris Agreement and its policy goal of “achieving net-zero emissions by 2050” for a second time. This presents a welcome challenge to these corrupt institutions. Do President Trump and some populist parties in Europe have the ability to confront the entrenched globalist climate agenda?
world bank
17thth In October, Oxfam released a report that shockingly found that a whopping $41 billion in World Bank climate finance—almost 40% of all climate finance disbursed by the World Bank over the past seven years—“wasn’t achieved until projects received His whereabouts remained unknown during the approval and project implementation period.” closure. “In other words, no one knows how the money was spent. There are no written records showing where the money went or what results were achieved.
Green nepotism, from the Solyndra debacle—nearly $500 million in taxpayer money wasted on a failed solar farm project overseen by President Obama—to President Biden’s dually titled Inflation Cut Act, The bill would trigger a huge debt estimated at $1 trillion. But it is instructive to trace the decline of the World Bank from its glorious founding goals to its current status as just another institution championing green causes.
Dr. Jim Yong Kim embodied President Obama's progressive virtues when he was appointed World Bank president in 2012, and in 2013 he banned financing of coal-fired power plants. resource development projects. Deepak Lal, a distinguished economist and former research administrator at the World Bank, said Dr. King implausibly “overturned his own economic staff estimates of the cost-effectiveness of coal power relative to solar and wind power, proving its rationality.” This refers to the desire to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. “
The World Bank's opposition to the use of fossil fuels, despite their importance to economic growth and poverty alleviation (which constitutes its basic institutional objectives), dates back to James Wolfensohn's decade as president (1995-2005 ) the intellectual evolution of its management during the period. Mr. Wolfensohn traces the trajectory from the old regime to the new. The old representative is the “Washington Consensus” of free markets, free trade systems, sound money and entrepreneurship associated with Adam Smith's classical liberalism.
The new intellectual environment of the World Bank's management—represented by World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz (1997-2000)—was defined by the theoretical failures of free markets, in particular Used in explaining the alleged negative climate impacts of fossil fuels. “An economy based on fossil fuels imposes 'incalculable' costs on society,” climate alarmist Stiglitz wrote in a 2015 court brief representing a group of children in a failed climate lawsuit against the U.S. federal government. will be paid in full.
Rupert Darwall, a former adviser to the UK chancellor and author of Green Tyranny, summed up the World Bank’s betrayal of its founding objectives as follows:
The World Bank's mission has been upended by green theorists who claim that a low-carbon world is good for the world's poor but fail to acknowledge that sharply rising energy costs will worsen poverty. The World Bank positions itself as “working for a world without poverty”… When faced with a choice between development and sustainability, the World Bank decided to work with the support of the poor to “save the planet”.
Abandoning its basic principles of alleviating global poverty, the World Bank has taken a leading role among multilateral financial institutions in denying substantial financial resources to poorer countries. It disingenuously denies the right of developing countries to pursue the path of economic growth and environmental improvement that today's rich countries have successfully embarked on since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. The Bank's excessive support for intermittent, low-yield renewable energy sources such as solar and wind comes at the expense of its central charter to help the poor, a result that can only be described as profoundly unjust.
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The United Nations IPCC issued a press release on December 6th Ahead of the “scoping” meeting in Kuala Lumpur, more than 230 experts from 70 countries participated to draft an outline of the working group's contribution to the 7th session of the United Nations IPCCth Assessment report (to be completed in 2029). The IPCC claimed in a press release that human burning of fossil fuels “is causing extreme weather events to become more frequent and intense, with increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people around the world.” This is contrary to the IPCC's position to date that nearly all None of these extreme weather events can be confidently attributed to human activity.
The IPCC’s position on the lack of any link between climate change and extreme weather events is contrary to the almost daily headlines in the mainstream media attributing specific severe weather events to “climate change.” The work of prominent climate policy analysts Steve Koonin and Roger Pielke Jr. has done much to expose the pseudoscientific nature of so-called “attribution studies.” These typically involve researchers who apply climate models and historical observations to conclude that any given weather event (such as a hurricane or drought) is “more likely” or “more severe” as a percentage due to “human influence” (referring to the burning of fossil fuels).
Based on dubious claims of “attribution science,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a climate law last week that would hold companies operating in the state responsible for large amounts of global warming pollution and help remediate climate damage. Make a contribution. Under the new state law, companies that produced the majority of emissions between 2000 and 2018 will be on the hook for about $3 billion a year over the next 25 years.
Steve Koonin quoted the World Meteorological Organization as saying, “Given the current state of scientific understanding, no single event, such as a tropical cyclone, can be attributed to human-induced climate change.” The IPCC’s Special Report on Extreme Events states , “Many extreme weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability… Even without man-made climate change, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes will still occur.”
Nonetheless, international organizations such as the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have become increasingly politicized in response to climate hysteria. In this context, Chris Morrison daily skeptic Discover”[f]There is growing belief that the IPCC may downplay or even abandon its current findings that almost all types of extreme weather events had little or no sign of human involvement in the past, or any sign before 2100.
international energy agency
December 23RDU.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, released a report documenting how the International Energy Agency “slipped from its energy security mission to become a cheerleader for the “energy transition.” “The report believes that “French President Macron's remarks that the IEA has become an “armed force to implement the Paris Agreement” are regrettably true.” However, given the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, the IEA should not become a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from the IEA is sober, unbiased analysis and forecasts that educate and inform policymakers and investors, and it's not getting it now. The IEA needs to remember why it was created and return to its energy security mission.
In recent years, the IEA has strayed from its original mission of advising policymakers in member countries through sound analysis of global energy supply and demand trends to become a cheerleader for aggressive net-zero emissions policy goals. Not ignored. I have written here , here and here about the ideological approach the IEA takes in advocating for green causes.
When the group issued a call in May 2021 to halt all future investments in developing fossil fuel resources, I wrote:
A month ago, the International Energy Agency (the rich-world energy advisory body set up after the 1973 oil price shock) released a shocking report calling for a halt to all new investment in oil and gas, not to mention coal. Unsurprisingly, the IEA “road map” has attracted widespread media coverage and strong reactions, ranging from strong support to outright dismissal from those convinced of the “climate emergency”, as in the case of the Saudi oil minister who called out the report “La La Land” “The sequel to “.
When ideological advocacy becomes the measure of the IEA's achievements, a loss of credibility and legitimacy in its policy recommendations is to be expected. The IEA’s messianic enthusiasm for green technologies such as solar and wind power, “green” hydrogen, batteries and electric vehicles prevents it from asking fundamental questions. If deep fossil fuel cuts are indeed consistent with higher economic growth and increased productive employment, then why does the IEA recommend that policymakers force countries to follow a “net zero” path? Of course, if replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar and electric vehicles boosts growth and jobs, wouldn't countries like China and India naturally race to achieve this without expensive green subsidies and punitive anti-fossil fuel policies? The best world?
The Trump revolution is imminent
Non-profit organizations reflect the needs of their funding members, and organizations such as the World Bank, IPCC and IEA are no exception. Since they are funded primarily by the United States and the European Union, it is not surprising that they embody the “climate emergency” preferences of the Biden administration and most left-socialist Western European governments, which view climate change as an existential threat and a national security priority matter. In taking on the responsibility of green initiatives on behalf of their funders, these organizations have lost all credibility as independent and objective advisors to their member states.
The climate industry complex is worried about the prospect of the Trump administration withdrawing from the Paris Agreement for a second time. PoliticoA trusted voice for the climate agency expressed these concerns shortly after Trump's election: “The world is waiting for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement for a second time – only this time, he can act faster, Fewer restrictions. In Europe, populist parties have emerged in part due to a widespread rejection by EU citizens of the onerous fiscal burdens imposed by green policies.
The dramatic changes in policy direction promised by the Trump administration's second term “Drill, baby, drill” to the global climate giants (represented by the three major international institutions profiled here) can only be seen as hopeful as we look to Make positive progress on climate change.
Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist and former Forbes and members of C02 alliance. follow him substack and X.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and provided via RealClearWire.
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