US Spending Bill Blocks Obama’s UN Climate Fund $Billions

‘Poor Nations Will Need Up To $1.5 Trillion Climate Funding Per Year By 2050’

An “omnibus” spending bill to fund the federal government through October 2015 throws up roadblocks for the Obama administration’s climate agenda, namely by blocking taxpayer dollars from going to the United Nations global warming fund. The House’s $1.1 trillion spending bill will prevent President Obama from fulfilling his pledge to give $3 billion to the UN’s Green Climate Fund. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 10 December 2014

President Obama’s pledge to give unelected bureaucrats at the U.N. $3 billion for climate change initiatives is an unfortunate decision to not listen to voters in this most recent election cycle. His climate change spending priorities, estimated to be $120 billion since the beginning of his Administration, were on the ballot, and Americans spoke.  The President’s climate change agenda has only siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people. –Senator James Inhofe, The Daily Caller, 10 December 2014

India will not allow any outside body to review progress of its “intended” climate targets and measures as these will be “nationally determined” contributions. Making India’s stand amply clear on the issue of “progress review”, Indian environment and climate change minister Prakash Javadekar said, “We do not see any role for any ex-ante review in this process”. China and most of the developing countries have the same view on the issue. –Vishwa Mohan, Times of India, 11 December 2014

In his intervention on Green Climate Fund during the talks, Javadekar also pitched for bigger kitty of climate finance from the developed world. He said developing countries need for mitigation and adaptation was being estimated in the range of $600 billion to $1500 billion per year (by 2050). He also focused on the reluctance of the rich nations to contribute to the Green Climate Fund. –Vishwa Mohan, Times of India, 11 December 2014

The gloves came off at the Lima climate change talks on Tuesday. Developed countries came together to demand that references to developing countries’ priority of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development be dropped from the talks. Several countries, including Brazil, China and others, countered these views of the developed countries. India, too, aligned with other developing countries in defending its developmental interests and demanded primacy of sustainable development, food security and poverty eradication in the preamble of Lima decision. –Nithin Sethi, Business Standard, 11 December 2014

The 20th annual “Conference of the Parties” to the UN’s 1992 climate treaty (“COP-20”) is in its second week in Lima, Peru and the news is the same as from pretty much every other one. You don’t need a calendar to know when these are coming up, as the media are flooded with global warming horror stories every November. During the first week of these two-day meetings, developing nations coalesce around the notion the developed world (read: United States) must pay them $100 billion per year in perpetuity. In the second week, the UN announces, dolefully, that the conference is deadlocked. As the deadlock continues, the UN will announce that the meeting is going to go overtime. Sometime on the weekend someone will announce a breakthrough, the meeting will adjourn, and everyone will go home to begin the cycle anew until next December’s COP-21 in Paris. –Patrick Michaels, Cato at Liberty, 9 December 2014

Second week COP ritual: Hopes for Lima climate conference unravel. As thousands of people took part in a colourful march through the centre of Lima demanding action to “save Mother Earth”, ministers and delegates from more than 190 countries were struggling to salvage the UN climate conference here. Earlier optimism about a successful conclusion this weekend is unravelling as the text being negotiated has “ballooned” out of control, with more and more amendments tabled by countries and blocs seeking to have their points of view reinforced. Miguel Arias Canete, the new European climate action and energy commissioner, conceded that “not a single paragraph has been agreed” in a text that had grown to 100 pages or more, making it “very difficult for ministers to reach agreement”. –Frank McDonald, The Irish Times, 11 December 2014

Second week COP ritual: For a sense of the frustrating tenor of climate negotiations underway here, which aim to agree on a clear outline of a new international climate-protecting agreement, consider this: One of the two draft documents being thrashed out had, by Wednesday morning, with just three days of a fortnight of talks remaining, ballooned into an unworkable 52-page opus. And not a single paragraph within the latest iteration of that 52-page draft had been agreed upon by the troop of international climate negotiators. The ballooning text is a manifestation of what has become normal practice during annual climate negotiations, with nations posturing for days before finding some middle ground just as the talks wrap up. –John Upton, Business Spectator, 11 December 2014

Greenpeace activists are facing criminal charges for damaging the Nazca Lines in Peru during a publicity stunt. The 20 activists are accused of leaving footprints in the desert while they unfurled a banner next to a figure of a hummingbird, which is part of a Unesco world heritage site. Luis Jaime Castillo, Peru’s deputy culture minister, said the government was seeking to prevent those responsible from leaving the country while it asked prosecutors to file charges of “attacking archaeological monuments”, a crime punishable by up to six years in prison. –Ben Webster, The Times, 11 December 2014