The climate change purse strings are in the collectivist hands of the world’s 20 largest economies, the G20, meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for two days while the UN Climate Change summit, the COP29, continues in Baku, Azerbaijan. COP29 claims the world requires at least $1 trillion annually to stave off climate change, yet the European Union and the United States have balked at China’s absence from the donor table. The incoming Trump II administration may threaten doom for climate change funding, prompting global leaders to scramble urgently for financial commitments from member nations before the plug is pulled on “climate finance.”
‘Climate Finance’ to Save the World
Though the policies and workshops promoted by these unelected organizations routinely incorporate gender rights, hunger, and equity in their appeals for money and power over more and more people’s lives, climate change is the foundation of globalist proposals to oversee vast sums of money from member nations. The United Nations defines “climate finance” as:
“[L]ocal, national or transnational financing — drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing — that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change. The Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement call for financial assistance from Parties with more financial resources to those that are less endowed and more vulnerable. This recognizes that the contribution of countries to climate change and their capacity to prevent it and cope with its consequences vary enormously. Climate finance is needed for mitigation, because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, as significant financial resources are needed to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.”
The rationale is that a lot of money is required to reduce emissions as well as to adapt to a changing climate and that, because they warm the planet more than developing nations, the wealthier ones, such as those in the G20, should contribute $1 trillion per year toward climate change remediation.
G20 Borrowing to Buy Stuff From Themselves
Much of the funding supports technological advances and renewables, which are dubious environmental investments due to the ecotoxins generated in their manufacture. Even assuming these products work as advertised, it is a concerning conflict that the developed nations are using the threat of climate change to justify raising trillions of dollars to purchase solar panels and water-monitoring computers from developed nations to “rescue” poorer nations.
The trillions of dollars in collective “green” funds are held by globalist banks known in UN jargon as “operating entities of the financial mechanism.” In opening remarks at the G20 Summit, President Joe Biden praised this financial centralization:
“We’ve made good progress boosting the firepower of multilateral development banks so they have more resources to address the challenges like pandemics and climate change. In addition, we have to mobilize private capital at scale.
“This group is — within — has within its power to usher in a new era of sustainable development, to go from billions to trillions in assistance to those who — most in need.”
A Change in Financing Climate?
The premise for this arrangement is essentially socialist: “Developing countries argue they can only raise their targets for emissions reductions if rich nations, who are the main culprits for climate change, foot the bill.” Under this calculus, the climate “culprits” must pay the marginalized to prevent the existential threat to the planet, a sort of collective climate reparations bill. The US voters have not been invited to the Rio table, or they might query whether the money being invested in computer monitoring and solar panel arrays might better serve denizens of developing nations to build hospitals or schools.
The stakes are high for the globalist stakeholders. The EU and others want China to pay more; COP29 is DOA without G20 support; a failure to achieve consensus at this stage portends doom for 2025 and beyond. A face-saving “compromise” is being floated as a resolution, with reports that “negotiators agreed to a text mentioning developing nations’ voluntary contributions to climate finance, stopping short of calling them obligations, according to two diplomats.”
Biden embarrassingly missed a photo shoot with the G20 nation leadership in Rio, symbolic of his waning climate-funding reign. This may prove symbolic as Donald Trump takes the helm of the realm and perhaps will determine that US commitments to all UN, WHO, and NATO programs are similarly “voluntary contributions” to climate finance.
