h/t James Delingpole – The New York Times reports that the developing world is abandoning green tainted US backed global banking institutions, and is looking to China for infrastructure finance.
According to the New York Times;
American diplomats are upset that dozens of countries — including Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh — have flocked to join China’s new infrastructure investment bank, a potential rival to the World Bank and other financial institutions backed by the United States.
The reason for the defiance is not hard to find: The West’s environmental priorities are blocking their access to energy.
Support for the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and its agenda free brand of capitalism, extends well beyond the developing world. All Asian and major non-Asian countries, except Japan and America, have agreed to join the new bank, with countries like Australia being offered a leading role in the new institution.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
I think we will get a whole barrage of unintended consequences hitting the fan as this scam finally unravels!
I see a lingering death not an unraveling.
Where or what is the tipping point (pun intended) that will cause it to unravel?
This is what I have been hoping for for years….only economic pressure will dethrone the green insanity….that and their obvious lack of scientific reasoning.
That’s why I cringe when people get on their high horse and declare, “Buy American.” That is the worst possible policy.
I’m not sure that it is unintended.
MarkW: You took the words from my mouth. In power politics there are very long plays. China has managed to engage some useful idiots – and some not so idiotic (or ‘green’) – to get the West to drop its guard. The Chinese have shorted us and are now getting ready to hoover up the spoils.
Harry, I think you miss the point. In Asia there is a need for capital. The USA will not allow it except where that agenda matches there disastrous green agendas. It is not China taking advantage, it is the US being blindsided by there political bias. China is merely the vehicle, and will buy a lot of goodwill doing this.
POTUS could stop this just by freeing up capital for cheap energy for the poor. His belief’s stop him.
Reality intrudes.
How can we be sure it was an unintended consequence?
Views of a young Maurice Strong, creator of Agenda 21
And a disturbing quote from the Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21600967/comments
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
— Maurice Strong, Senior Advisor to UN Secr-General Kofi Annan
Watching that interview, from 43 years ago. And considering that things are really not much worst, or bad at all, at the moment, except for predicted catastrophy with no basis in observation… you have to wonder at the pure evil it takes to state the things he did, with such certainty in 1972.
Forty Three + years in the making, this conference in Paris is the culmination of evil machinations from an elite few.
How the hippies and hipsters and general population have been so duped into believing that humans are evil, is sad to say the least and a tragedy.
How do we know this is unintended?
Not at all, it was the GOAL of the CAGW alarm to prevent them to access energy. Now was it a noble goal to start with…
But not unpredictable.
Why do you think it was unintended?
The triumph of sense.
On this I am definitely Pro-Choice. Screw the World Bank monopoly
I have always been against the World Bank, for refusing to lend money to countries to build new dams and coal fired power stations.
World Bank has been a total hindrance to the developing world.
Regards
Climatic Heretic
Malawi certainly found that out when they wished to build a coat fired power station. Request for $10million failed.
My god johnmarshall, how many coats would they need to burn?
Perhaps we should start calling the O administration racist and a colonialist because of his so-called green policies that restrict developing nations from gaining a higher standard of living. Funny how those who claim to hate someone or something usually end up becoming it.
The administration would not oppress or persecute anyone, would they?
https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/?source=socnet_20130815_blog_bo_aa_climate-deniers/&utm_source=socnet_20130815_blog_bo_aa_climate-deniers/#/
I am ashamed that my government would post something like this with the steam/smoke graphic in the background, no less! The only positive is the long list of “deniers” hopefully growing every day.
Aside from the sickening McCarthyism of it – thanks God there are so many ‘deniers’. Keep fighting guys. By the way, I didn’t check but are ALL the ‘deniers’ Republican?
“The only positive is the long list of “deniers” hopefully growing every day.”
Odd, I saw where you could “Add Your Name to Join the Fight”, but no place to register as another denier?
Is there an count of actual “climate scientists”? Maybe all 9 agree?
The good news here is that there are so many of these deniers! It’s worse than they thought.
That Obama website is pretty sad/disgusting. Labeling 160 governors, senators, and representatives as deniers (and encouraging harassment of them) is shameful.
Like Paul said, the good news is that the list is pretty long (hopefully getting longer).
The “great” state of Oregon doesn’t have anyone on the list … maybe when someone from Oregon is added to the list we will be assured that the “debate” is actually over.
Nikolai I live in one of these developing nations with a 90% black majority and I can attest that the renewables policies we are forced to implement by our EU and US trading partners, are keeping the poorest poor by making electricity unaffordable and even unavailable. (“Load shedding” is our local term for rolling blackouts, with a 30% shortfall of supply vs demand, while major renewables installations continue.)
I don’t doubt it a bit. O is all about power. He is a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. His seemingly compassionate rhetoric and policies only serve to provide cover for evil to take root. Global warming is the new Marxism. It, the manipulation of the monetary system . . . the evil caused by these and like policies will follow just like that time in history. It is already playing out. A large part of the reason for the so-called Arab Spring was caused by Obummer exporting inflation by printing so much fiat money, causing commodities to rise in price causing poor nations on the edge to go from barely affording food to starving. Syria, ISIS taking hold, etc. all began in part because of this manipulation and control. Sadly, history is repeating itself.
man that sucks. I am sorry that is happening.
@ Nikolai…he is a jackal hiding in sheep,s clothing, not a wolf.
Fabian coat of arms:
http://canadafreepress.com/images/uploads/fabian-wolf.jpg
Thank you Nikolai. That needs to be said and widely distributed.
Surprise, Surprise!
The US government at every level is being run by entrenched nitwits, zealots & cronies who can only provide the expanding chaos their mendacious self interest and asinine notions are capable of producing.
It’s amazing what local municipalities come up with to justify their pathetic agenda and lousy decisions.
The eagerness in which they lie profusely is astounding.
Steve please quit beating around the bush and let us know how you really feel about this….vacillation only causes further confusion
Btw I agree 100%
Steve in Oregon – I’ll wager your municipality has signed on with the ICLEI….and is merely being led by the hog-ring in thier collective nose to implement Agenda 21 at your local level. Recommend you go to the city-run website to see if they have proclaimed so?
MCR
There’s an old saying called the golden rule in business, “Those that have the gold make the rules.” The Chinese are an economic powerhouse and rising rapidly. They are the second largest sovereign holder of the US’s debt. The arrogance that Europe and the US have towards developing nations is astounding, particularly given the stagnation of their economies. It amazes me how rapidly China has grown since the turn of the century. China is asserting its economic power and the military part will follow close on its heels.
It is already happening in the form of artificial islands constructed in the South China Sea. Now they can claim territorial rights and back it up with military might.
When the history of the decline of the United States as a world power comes to be written (likely in Chinese), this will be seen as one of the seminal moments. Allowing green ideology to trump economic reality, the US is ceding all hope of influencing the emerging Third World economies to the Chinese. And, not indecently, all the moral high ground. When disadvantaged peoples are asked “Who cares the most about your daily suffering?” the answer won’t be the US, but China.
China’s gold and the US:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mystery-chinas-gold-stash-may-160100151.html
There allegedly however is a chance that some of China’s gold is actually tungsten.
That, accompanied by an image this week of Obama hanging a medal around Warren Buffett’s neck. Oh, the hypocrisy.
Don’t be surprised if one day China opens her Mint to free and unlimited coinage of silver, makes the yuan redeemable in silver, and issues silver bonds sold for and maturing in silver. Without firing a single shot, China would become the clearing house for silver bills of exchange and thus the center of world trade, while the US treasury bond market would implode, leaving the moth-eaten credit of the US in tatters. Whatever losses China took on her Himalayan pile of US paper would be far more than offset by her gains on the ocean of silver that the Chinese so love.
Don’t fall for the “communist” ruse — that’s just to divert attention and buy time. China has some serious scores to settle with the humiliating treatment of the Opium Wars and the disasters that followed in their wake.
China also stockpiles gold, copper and other resources beyond its immediate needs, turning US paper made worthless by Obama and the Fed into real assets.
There is a possibility however that some of its “gold” is actually tungsten.
The exact opposite is true.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/10/investing/strong-dollar-pros-cons/
Yet another foreign policy success story for the BHO administration.
” AIIB is committed to the principles of sustainable development in the concept, design, and implementation of its investment activities, which support infrastructure and interconnectivity to promote economic growth and improve the lives of people in its members. Building on MDB experience and with the support of international experts, the Secretariat has initiated a process to develop an environmental and social policy framework to assure integration of these concerns in its operations. Procedures will be developed to ensure that an environmental and social assessment process, complemented by management, mitigation and monitoring measures, forms an integral part of the decision making, design and implementation of investment activities.
Preparation of the framework will benefit from inputs provided by representatives of the existing MDBs who participated in the AIIB-hosted Workshop on Institutional Development held on March 5-6, 2015 in Beijing. Further meetings and consultations will be held as an element of framework development.
The policy framework will be approved by AIIB’s Board and be in place before AIIB begins any investment activities. ”
http://aiibank.org/Faq-Contents.html#describe-Q13
they know that only sustainable developement has any future.
Which is why the Chinese christen a new brown-coal-burning 1000 MW power plant, typically with no baghouse to filter the soot, every week or so. I have seen what they use for air in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and other major Chinese cities. “Sustainable” my foot, there is an observation tower in Tianjin where at sunset you cannot tell which direction is west, Sun completely invisible.
Don’t believe everything you read…
This brought to you by CHINA…CHINA the largest single communist government that utilizes it’s 3/4 billion impoverished citizens to offset their CO2 production via “Per Capita” figures rather than total tonnage produced per anum. CHINA that will likely be doubling its CO2 output over the next 30 years and, still claiming Per Capita figures that are lower than the US, actually be responsible for almost 1/2 of the world Anthropogenic CO2 production.
YHGTBSM!
Have you ever been to China? Its air quality or lack thereof is beyond Dickensian. Its dark, satanic mills are thrown up without any thought as to air pollution. The Communist regime will more likely finally be overthrown from lack of clean air than lack of political liberty.
China laughs at us as they build ever more dirty coal plants, while selling us windmills and solar panels, which can’t be made in the US because of our environmental restrictions and lack of rare earths, the substitutes being too expensive.
Any talk of “sustainable” investment in the bank’s charter is just meaningless chatter. Look at China’s actions, not its verbiage.
*Have you ever been to China? *
yes,
“China laughs at us ”
yes, but not because of AGW.
” while selling us windmills and solar panels”
of which they installed most in their own country….
“Any talk of “sustainable” investment in the bank’s charter is just meaningless chatter. ”
hilarious.
you are really so naive to think that they ignore AGW? you may believe whatever you want about AGW, but most people, including the Chinese government, listens to scientists and not bloggers.
Have you actually been to China? A lot may have changed in 7 years since I was there; on the other hand, you sound like another purveyor of lurid nonsense.
I was there last year on business. The Chinese are taking environmental issues more seriously, but mostly for newer projects. The challenge seems to be there are just so many existing plants, not to mention all the cars, that don’t come up to modern expectations.
OTOH, I didn’t see many solar panels in major cities, although the Southern cities tended to have more rooftop solar water heaters. I was told that north of Shanghai, they didn’t work as well.
@ Catherine…you are right that they worry about their citizens growing anger over the filthy air they are forced to breathe. Imagine what a nightmare it must be like for a parent with their one child, always worrying what that thick brown air is doing to his/her health.
Denial,
You’re beyond naive if you imagine that China’s leadership worries about or even believes in “AGW”. If they do, they’d consider it a good thing.
Their scientists are among the most realistic in studying climate.
I very much doubt that you have been to China’s polluted cities, or you’d not spout such ludicrous lies.
RW,
I’ve been to China in the 1970s, ’80s. ’90s, ’00s and ’10s. I’ve seen what ignoring the environment has done, and the cost of unbridled development. Not just in air pollution, but to the lakes, rivers and coasts.
If my description strikes you as lurid, it’s because that’s reality.
Gold Minor,
You’re right. When I’m allowed to talk to people in China, they express grave concern, often through their masks. Just ordinary breathing in the industrial cities is like smoking. Add riding a bike long distances on top of that.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2013/jan/14/chinese-air-pollution-in-pictures
Check it out for yourselves.
I know, I know. The Grauniad, but still the pictures are valid. Also the data from the US Embassy air quality monitors.
On the subject of the Air in China according to “The National Interest”
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-declares-war-pollution-12464
you mean like London all the way up to the 1950s. Don’t remember anyone being overthrown because of pea soupers where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
Currently live in China (past 11 years). They don’t worry about CO2. They mainly talk about PM 2.5. and real pollution. The problem is a political one , internally. There are national laws set but the big cities don’t follow them and get fined regularly. Local authorities turn a blind eye. Big factories create employment. Money, money, money.
I’ve just spent two weeks in China – Beijing, Changsha, Chongqing and Shanghai. Air was fine in all these places. It was on the cold side though – I was expecting warmer and came inadequately dressed (so I bought a jumper).
North Europeans have a tradition of creating monster dragon scare stories about distant little known parts of the world. The Spanish Inquisition was one such politically motivated fiction still popular with Christianity-bashers but a total myth. There were also tales of giants and people with detachable heads.
These air quality stories show that this tradition is alive and well.
Daniel Kuhn
they know that only sustainable developement has any future.
I’m in China now. That verbiage is only written for morons like you.
Phlogiston,
Are you delusional? “Air was fine in all these places” is a statement of no factual content. I was in Beijng and Tianjin two years ago. Only saw the Sun after it rained, then it was gone again 36 hours later. Was it pouring the whole time you were there?
Don’t be that guy…
It is immoral for the US to block access to affordable energy in poor countries. What has the US become when China must give it lessons on how to help other people?
‘Progressive?’ Progressives hate brown people unless they behave.
And unless they block vote for the progressives.
Voting in the correct manner is the ONLY behavioral requirement … anything else goes.
Greg says:
Progressives hate brown people unless they behave.
Which brings up a law of human nature/politics:
Fen’s Law:
The Left believes none of the things they lecture the rest of us about.
I’ve always been against the IPCC and its supporters of their agenda, clearly articulated in the Kyoto Protocol – that is to keep the less developed nations (its people) from achieving clean water, electricity, and sewage treatment for the masses.
I do agree with the citation in the article for safe nuclear and solar with energy storage.
Can’t say I fully trust the Chinese but this is a dimension of the proposed infrastructure bank I was not aware of and I now understand why my country, Australia, has decided to opt in and that the US Obama administration is pissed off. What do the Republicans think?
It isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue. Instead, the problem lies with the elites who usurp the power of the state to keep the heavy foot of the elite- owned institutions of concentrated wealth on the necks of everyone else. The suppression of developing nations keeps them vulnerable to rampant exploitation of their resources and prolongs the day when those nations can accumulate enough wealth to withstand the world’s power elite, as the Chinese have done.
“Alan Robertson
April 17, 2015 at 8:53 am
The suppression of developing nations keeps them vulnerable to rampant exploitation of their resources…”
This is exactly what is happenoing right now in East Africa, specifically Ethiopia. I have witnessed it first hand, corruption everywhere you look and only local officials and imported Chinese workers have jobs.
If you understand US policy you will find the they only difference between parties are their corrupt leadership. Both are corrupt and owned by special interests.
They don’t think. Except for a few real conservative Republicans, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate roll over for Obama each and every time. So does the Chief Justice of the Supreme court; he is the one who gave us Obamacare.
Japan won’t join because its China, but they too are not shy about funding coal-fired power in developing countries, which leaves just the USA and EU in the decadent green club.
There is no hope for the EU, but the USA could easily flip with a change of government.
The EU is stuck with coalition govts, in which the 5% green vote often ends up with 100% control over energy.
[The] Eu is going down the drain, this is all going to change, will still take a while.
Not all the EU.
The UK has joined the Chinese AIIB.
I think the UK is going to thrive.
Richard, The UK will only thrive if the socialists are not elected. If not. No chance. They will go down with the EU.
I often hear people complaining about “China taking all of our jobs.” I also hear people whining about big-box-store Walmart. Being a people-person, I usually violently slap them across the head, and then try to educate them. We are in The Greatest Depression. There are even longer bread lines than there were in the puny Great Depression. It’s just that now people don’t see those lines because they are invisible. Those bread lines are camouflaged.
44.5 Million people are on food stamps in America … or 14,588 participants for each Walmart Super Center. The program is called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To remove the stigma of food stamps, the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card was created and is used the same way as a credit card.
So China produces real goods for impoverished Americans, takes only IOU-Nothing’s in return, and then the very people who benefit from the Chinese bash them and the system that distributes their benevolence.
Check out this remarkable graphic: American — Food Stamp Nation
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/food_stamps/food_stamp_nation-SNAP.html
Max Photon April 17, 2015 at 8:47 am
Max, yes, you’ve got it. We are in a depression. I haven’t done a thorough search but my experience has found the demographics of any area in the US you will find approximately 18% are below the poverty line. While the meaning of that may be open for discussion, that those below the line get subsidies and aid is not. By government definition a huge portion of the population of the US is getting some sort of support. That is the equivalent of a soup line in anyone’s book. The minimum wage thing is a red herring. If you do valuable work you will get paid, period. MacD’s and Walmart, or for that matter entry level jobs in any industry are low paying. Nobody should expect to make a living in those jobs but that’s what socialists do: tell people they can have a great life doing mediocre things. The real damning part of the picture is the debt accrued to get education. That part will choke off two things, births to families who have paid for their educations and purchases for housing, which is a really big deal. The educated among us will be forced into perpetual obligation to serve the debt with which they can be held hostage by politicians who use it as leverage to get elected. I think it is possible the Democrat party Environmentalism fetish will be their undoing but we will see. There are a lot of people who have really bought into radical anti-everything without thinking it through. The reality of the economic negativity of environmentalism is sinking in from the oil fields of N Dakota, New York and Pennsylvania to the coal mines of West Va, and the refineries of Texas but the global economics issues are clouding the picture. Business is bad because of the cost of environmentalism but right now the world price of oil hides the fact. The successful individuals who were making money before the Great Recession have been pushed out of their jobs or into lower paying jobs. The remaining high tech jobs in certain pockets of the US, like California, will have to shoulder more and more of the tax burden, like in California. That stress cannot be maintained indefinitely.
Everyone is being scammed! Look at the last graph on this webpage. The DJIA in terms of grams of gold instead of dollars, It does not take a financial genus to determine that the money they do have after this phony recovery from Obama is still worth less than it was in 2007. You may have twice as much in the market but it is actually still not worth it was before this depression started.
Here is the link — http://pricedingold.com/dow-jones-industrials/
James McMurtry wrote in the song We Can’t Make It Here Anymore:
“Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin,
Or the shape of their eyes
Or the shape that i’m in?
Should I hate ’em for havin’ our jobs today?
No, I hate the men who sent the jobs away!”
Max,
You’re right, but China isn’t just trying to take jobs. I worked at a big defense contractor for thirty some years. At first there were very few Chinese, and they were at least 3rd generation Americans who spoke perfect English. Lots of them only spoke English. They were 100% Americans, and very patriotic from what I could tell.
Over the years there were more and more Chinese employed, mostly as engineers, and the new hires spoke heavily accented English. Most were here on visas. The company eventually put up signs up in its hallways, saying, “Only U.S. Citizens Allowed Beyond This Point”. At first, the signs were obeyed. But because some folks are lazy, they weren’t enforced, and they became meaningless over time.
I spoke to a woman in the employment office, who was complaining about how difficult it was to verify applications with relatives in mainland China. Can you imagine? A big defense contractor employs Chinese immigrants by the hundreds, if not thousands (there were ≈36,000 total employees in that one division). They were recent immigrants who grew up and went to school in mainland China.
I am not accusing all Chinese employees of espionage. But when they have lots of relatives back home, tremendous pressure can be brought to bear. I firmly believe many Chinese employees were providing information to the Chinese government. And the Taiwanese Chinese who worked there were convinced that most of the mainlanders were loyal only to China.
They weren’t the only ones. When the Berlin Wall came down, lots of Russians came to America. Our company employed some of them. One Russian engineer was a former KGB agent, and the company sent him around to tighten security by explaining to employees what to watch out for.
I went to those meetings. He told us that one of the easiest ways to collect intelligence was for night shift janitors to look in engineers’ waste baskets and pull out the drawings and other info. He said some of the janitors were in fact engineers planted for that purpose. About that time I recall a newspaper article showing side-by-side pictures of our space shuttle, and a Russian copy. They looked idfentical. That one caused a lot of comments at our lunch table, because we had some big space shuttle contracts.
I think America is far too trusting. We cannot tell friend from foe when the foe is well trained. Every Chinese worker I met was very friendly. I liked them. But I also saw them with their heads close together, talking low in a language I assume was a Chinese dialect.
They are not all our friends. And we’ve all seen how good they are at copying everything. It’s one thing to copy cars. But we made very advanced weapons systems. If it were up to me I would only employ third generation Americans. But then, political correctness would raise its ugly head.
I don’t know the answers, and I’m retired now. I suspect it’s gotten even worse. These were just my personal experiences, and I am sure the same thing happens in every big company. America is far too naive and trusting. We are in a long term war for dominance, and we will pay heavily for that some day.
Objections:
1) The Manhattan Project wouldn’t have been so successful with your policy.
2) Diversity of culture stimulates creativity. You just need to know your friends. The US has done well with the UK as an ally, although culturally we are different (as you and I demonstrate).
3) Why third generation? The surveys say that British Muslim youths are more extreme than their parents… and they tend to be third generation. Loyalty is not a matter of terroir.
MCourtney,
I don’t follow you re: the Manhattan Project. Were the Chinese instrumental in that?
And your #2 seems to take for granted that “diversity” is always a good thing. I can think of lots of exceptions to that.
I do sympathize with your Muslim youth problems. That could be EASILY remedied. But again, P.C. gets in the way.
I don’t believe the EBT was introduced to remove stigma. It’s cheaper for both government and retailers than messing with stamps, and a recipient’s buying habits can be tracked, compiled, and sold. VA and Social Security benefits are also moving to plastic. With the end of physical currency, controlling behavior will be much easier.
“There are even longer bread lines than there were in the puny Great Depression. It’s just that now people don’t see those lines because they are invisible. Those bread lines are camouflaged.”
You are right on the money. I’ve been telling that same exact thing to my kids (teenagers) for a couple of years…to counteract their horribly biased public ‘edumacation’.
Sad, but if I may paraphrase Dr. Viner: “Children won’t know what a recovery is.”
Developing world realizes Obama’s green money is running out….
….film at 11
I see this as a “nail in the coffin” of the dollar’s role as the world currency. If the dollar were replaced it would mean fiscal devastation for the US, even without the help of green madness.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/10978178/The-dollars-70-year-dominance-is-coming-to-an-end.html
HEY, don’t you know that a dollar spent on green infrastructure results in two more dollars created through peripheral activities. We just need more green projects.
(just don’t tell anybody that the eventual real value of each of the individual “two dollars” is way less than 50% of the original dollar)
Brilliant move by China to set this up. First step in replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency. It won’t happen overnight but look for more of these moves. China has setup hundreds of billions of dollars worth of “credit default swaps” with dozens of countries so they can trade without using the US dollar already.
Even Canada signed a CDS agreement with China. Canadian companies couldn’t compete paying the US dollar exchange “tax” with countries that didn’t.
If the west were smart (I know, I know, fat chance) they’d do something practical like insist on coal burning plants be up to USA/Euro standards for emissions of real pollutants rather than the way China is currently doing it. But to do that those 2 entities would have to admit they were wrong and join.
So for a long term view here is how I see it. China finances a lot of coal burning plants in the third world and once they sort out their electrical future (LFTR for example) they then have the inside track politically, financially and technologically to sell everyone their LFTR nuclear plants as the coal plants go end of life.
For a measly 100 billion in setup costs they may just take over the world’s energy supply and be the OPEC of nuclear energy in 40-50 years. Smart bunch.
They didn’t have to set anything up. As the first commenter said, it’s just another unintended consequence of our insane green policies. Under the circumstances, all China has to do is wait to pick up the pieces.
Watch for a swap where dollar debt instruments are used to pay contractors but the country borrowing will pay back in RMB. It will get rid of China’s T-Bills, sell them at an attractive price to contractors in the US and Japan and Europe, then collect RMB for 30 years. I have seen worse plans, like printing 70 billion $ a month…
From the NYT article:
“It is about pragmatism, about trade-offs,” said Barry Brook, professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “Most societies will not follow low-energy, low-development paths, regardless of whether they work or not to protect the environment.”
“If billions of impoverished humans are not offered a shot at genuine development, the environment will not be saved. And that requires not just help in financing low-carbon energy sources, but also a lot of new energy, period. Offering a solar panel for every thatched roof is not going to cut it.”
Irregardless of whether the environment really needs “saving” or not, those behind the World Bank need to wake up and realize that basic human needs like access to affordable electricity, clean water, good food, adequate shelter and health care have to come first through economic development before meaningful environmental protection policies can be put in place in the Third World. The poor in these countries are not going to care diddly squat about the environment until those needs are met. The current environmental paradigm which doesn’t allow for this development save for wind and solar energy has to be dumped with the realization that this is true.
Sadly, it is likely that hard core eco-fanatics will never understand and accept this and likely lobby hard to keep the current paradigm in place. Perhaps the next U.S. president will understand this and work to change it.
Or maybe not.
…..one more thing. The low-development, low carbon economic development paradigm is (IMHO) little more that a cold-blooded and anti-human religion that does not deserve the respect it currently seems to enjoy. The developed world eco-fanatics that are pushing this paradigm need to spend some time living as poor people in the these Third World countries and then come back home and tell me that they still stand by it.
We could cut our health care costs by 1/3rd to 2/3rds by using a plant. It cures (at least some) cancers. It helps 2/3rd of people with Type II diabetes. It slows down or reverses Alzheimer’s. And may be prophylactic for it in small doses. There are lots of other uses. It is illegal. And the biggest contributors to its illegal status? Big Pharma.
This country is as corrupt as they come.
That’s the Marxist zero sum game philosophy in action by our idiot-in-chief
An ideology totally discredited by history and experience is clung to white knuckle fashion by our leftist elites. Only so much energy only so much health only so much money and on and on. Never occurs to these morons that these things are created or enhanced by human genius and creativity.
That’s why democrats are constantly looking to divide “the pie” because they are totally clueless as to how to make a bigger pie. That’s where that stupid Obama speech in South Africa came from. The empty mind of a Marxist.
Isn’t there a book from the US called “Sharing Smaller Pies”?
Thanks to Obama, China is turning our allies into it’s allies.
The damage from this administration will take generations to repair.
Agree MarkW. Generations to repair. But I do not agree that all the damage can be undone or repaired. Some things necessary for the repairs include freedom (including religious and economic, free speech, right to work, freedom from surveillance and suppression, etc.). Also, with 50-100 million (you choose whatever number you like) illegal aliens representing 10s of millions of votes, how do we avoid a one-party progressive (Marxist) state?
So we can expect WW3 to start in 3, 2, 1…
RWTurner
Almost right. This IS WWIII. The Chinese have been waging it since their separation from the USSR communist leaders.
Now, in the past, you used to be able to “Declare war. Start a blockade to isolate the enemy. Invade after you have starved out the enemy, and as his supplies and resources go down. Win the war.” WWI for example. The US Civil War. Crimean War. WWII (unsuccessful against England, successful against Germany and Japan.
Today, China can declare a successful “blockade” of the US by simply stopping the container cranes in THEIR OWN PORTS. And the US and much of Europe will have to fight to even get back to a point where they can begin to build the industries and train the workers to start building the tools to start making the parts, the wrenches, the cutting tools, the ceramics, the mines and the pits to get the raw material.
RACook, you are right. This is war. See my comment upthread at 11:32 am today.
China doesn’t yet have sufficient domestic consumption to absorb its products, so needs trade with the West. But that could change as its subject peoples become wealthier.
It’s not the Chinese that I’m worried about. It’s the ones that lose profits from China’s move here. You know, the same people that became insanely rich by financing both sides of the war during WW1 and WW2.
“But that could change as its subject peoples become wealthier.”
==============================
There s much evidence that their economy is in deep trouble. Also, robotics is a boon for some, but a problem for China. I have no idea how all this will play out. Interesting times/
As has been stated correctly and repeatedly at WUWT, the green agenda has morphed into the anti-poor agenda.
Very soon the US needs to address its $18T debt and over $100T in unfunded promises. Very soon the interest rate on this debt could swing from almost zero to 2-4% as the world finds preferred credit markets.
The BRICS owe us nothing but the current administration is too blind to see, and has only hastened the process. Calculate the debt service for $25T at 3 or 4%. Coming soon. Then it will be obvious that we are the poor and the target of the green machine.
My knowledge on this is very limited, but it should be pointed out that major western European countries are rushing to join the Asian Bank, despite O protests. Their climate lunacy credentials are impeccable. IMO, it seems part of the slow demise of institutions established after WWII, in a different era. Organizations like the World Bank, IMF and particularly the UN Security Council seem past sell by date. Countries are very hypocritical about this, picking and choosing which of these bodies they still regard as sacrosanct. Neatly illustrated by Europeans giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for declaring undying love for the UN and UNSC.
If this wasn’t so serious, it would be funny…
I nominate- ‘ironic’ as the catch-all term here..
China has successfully waged economic war on the rest of the world for a generation, flooding the market with cheap potato peelers and counterfeit drilling equipment….now they are going to deliver the coup de grace, facilitated by the bickering idiots in the District of Columbia.
Barak was apparently the name of mohamad’s horse. These countries are following the strong horse, not the weak horse.
Cornfusions say; “Beware of the tiger that can outrun our horse!”
As the west continues its stupid policies, China, Russia, and the extreme Islamic faction(Saudi Arabia and Iran [Yes they are enemies, opposite ends of the same story]) grow stronger.
At the moment however, Russia and Iran are united against Saudi Arabia. I’m surprised that that coalition hasn’t already blown up the two main Saudi pipelines and sunk tankers in the Strait of Hormuz (and the UAE’s pipeline around the Strait). Sanctions aren’t hurting Iran much because it can get its oil to market via the Caspian Sea, thence Russian pipelines. But low crude prices are impeding Putin’s plans.
Cathy R,
Wouldn’t actions like that cause the price of oil to skyrocket? It seems there might be an incentive there…
A bigger surprise to me was that terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda had not destroyed Saudi Arabia’s oil export facilities. And then I realized how successfully the House of Saud had bribed these groups and exported their problems to other countries. And now the same royal family is destroying America’s shale oil industry.
With allies like these, who needs enemies in Moscow or Tehran?
Remarkable to see such a rational article in the NYT .
Mike Bromely: The Chinese have slowly been expanding their sphere of influence for years. My ex-company worked in South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa for years. I recall flying from Nairobi to Bankgok in about 1995, sitting next to a very well educated Chinese lady heading back to China after a term in Tanganyika practicing her perfect English on me. At that time, the Chinese had over 2000 people working in Tanganyika. It seemed like where ever I traveled in those days, I would see Chinese making in roads and contacts: Iran, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Philippines, Ghana, Egypt …. I am sure they have people everywhere.
My company worked in Ethiopia for close to 30 years (Aprox. 1972-2002). Hardly ever saw Americans other than the Ambassador until the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia (1998-2000) and it looked like the Red Sea needed some military presence with the instability. Suddenly there were lots of US uniformed folks around in Addis Ababa. The US was quite late to the party – at least visibly, who knows about the tied aid
Post 2000, lots of folks joined the party (excerpt from friend Wiki pertaining to Ethiopia as an example..):
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“The post-2000 period (in Ethiopia), however, has seen a resumption of large disbursements of grants and loans from the United States, the European Union, individual European nations, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. These funds totaled US$1.6 billion in 2001.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note: Japan, African Development Bank and China. Japan was always in the area, they have a big footprint for a “small” nation of 127 million people. Always makes me feel tiny with our sparse population of 35 million in Canada.
China and India are sleeping giants.
They may yet fight each other again, however. If not on their mountainous frontier as in 1962, then in the Indian Ocean or South China Sea. China is effectively allied with Pakistan, while Vietnam, Indonesia, the PI and other SE Asian opponents of China’s expansion southwards seek alliance with India.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417070/environmentalists-civil-war-robert-bryce
“On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. They call themselves ecomodernists and are led by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist, Oakland-based environmental group. On Wednesday, it released what it describes as an “ecomodernist manifesto,” a document that, at root, states the obvious: Economic development is essential for environmental protection.”
“Economic development is essential for environmental protection.”
the IPCC said this since many years. spcifically Edenhofer.
Did you read this in Bloomberg? The same outfit that says that March 2015 was the hottest month evahhhh! and the first three months of 2015 was the hottest first quarter evahhhhhh!
Ottmar Edenhofer:
“…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
There you have it. The “climate” scare is not about science at all. It is 100% politics.
If you look at US hydrocarbon production growth since 2008, Obama clearly isn’t against fossil fuels, just against fossil-fuel prosperity for anyone who’s not in a blue State.
This is just another impact of maniacal over reach by this WH onto international institutions. Leave it to the Chinese to steer around the obstinate policy obstacle with a new international lending institution. At least someone stands up to warped policy.
The Chinese have their own money loser operations in state-owned industry. They don’t need to compound the problem with Obama’s uneconomic World Bank projects in renewable projects to no where. Some places in the world still think about growth and development in place of largess and perception plays.
My prediction from the beginning of the Obama presidency is playing out. It was that the Chinese and Putin would be falling over themselves outmaneuvering Obama in the global power chess game. They will probably accelerate their own version of over reach efforts up to the last days of his term and might then be overstretched on expansion if based on Hillary.
India isn’t playing ball either.
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/india-to-overtake-china-as-biggest-thermal-coal-importer/
“India is set to overtake China as the biggest importer of power-station coal, emerging as the leader of a clutch of regional nations that miners including Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd can tap for new orders.”
And India have just defenestrated Greenpeace (good for India!)
ah, now there’s a dog which might hunt Obama into ‘climate initiative’ irrelevance. The thing is the Chinese also have a clean air agenda to push on with against a gigantic energy sector so a conjured sense of crisis might help Beijing too in implementing that.
The name of the Chinese president is Xi Jinping.
Another thing worth noting is that these countries probably didn’t really want to turn to China for help. People are aware enough not to trust the Chinese. But since they’re being left in the lurch by the narcissistic West, their actions aren’t surprising.
A programme i saw about Chinese in Africa seemed to show the Africans were more than happy to have them investing. The Chinese have less strings attached and don’t treat them as idiots.
Just a matter of time until the dollar is replaced as the world’s reserve currency, too.
Modern environmentalism, at its core, is just hatred of man, hatred of the modern world created by him, hatred of his mind, the faculty that created the modern world, and hatred of the country that provided the freedom that allowed its creation. It has become a pseudo-scientific religion that has state backing.
This is correct about CAGW environmentalism. It shares these attributes with militant Islam. Islam is a backward dark ages culture which has failed to develop culturally and scientifically, and looks at modern industrial societies with inferiority-based angst, envy and bitterness. Worse (for them) it sees this technological civilisation as having roots in Christianity. This fuels the hate still further.
It won’t be long before AGW-environmentalists realise how much in common they have with militant Islam, and make common cause with the Imams of hate. Can you imagine Mike Mann with a muslim beard? – might not have to for long.
I don’t buy it. More than likely it is because we have been running the money printing presses hot and overtime at least since 2012.
The West environmental priorities have been blocking access to a lot things other than energy to poor nations and way before President Obama. See how many children under 5 were killed by malaria because of the policies of the USA, WHO, World Bank, etc. All well documented by an article written in 2004 in the New York Times. Letting kids die in a way that can only be described as torture.
Then you can guess who came to the rescue: CHINA.
Here is a link to the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/11DDT.html?pagewanted=3
@Roy:
Part of it too is that clearence of $ US payments go through US banks with US monitoring (or is that spying?) and regulation (or is that political strong arming) and assett forfieture / siezure risks. The overreach and abuse of financial systems is painfull to the ‘customer’ so they are happy to side step that crap.
We have Prohibition to thank for that. A policy largely supported by Republicans. Democrats are not the only culprits when it comes to our problems.
Good article about the World Bank entitled “worldbank projects leave trail of misery around globe.” All of these so called World/United Nations agencies have the same agenda…..world governance under the green flag. People and nations are starting to realize it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/17/worldbank-projects-leave-trail-misery-around-globe-kenya_n_7055722.html
Although I’m certainly no fan of the World Bank, it remains a comparatively small effort for the US. Although US contributions have gone up under Obama, they are below $2.5 billion for 2015.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20792.pdf
Compare that to the $20 billion for USAID programs or the more than $3 billion in military aid to Israel.
No matter how much environmental lipstick you put on the argument “We don’t want you to use cheap energy to build larger economies just because we did”, it ain’t going to go over well.
Absolutely stunning.
Regards
Climatic Heretic
I think that the Chinese are more unwilling to impose the kinds of environmental conditions that the Obama administration wants to put upon international development lending. Nevertheless, we won’t know what OTHER kinds of conditions they put upon other international firms in a political or trade context. This makes this bank somewhat problematic to me; the Japanese don’t want to join because of a lack of transparency on the part of this new bank, or so they say. This is just another stage, though, in China’s efforts to achieve some kind of economic (consequently, political) dominance in Asia if not the rest of the world. What this dominance will look like remains unknown; but it does not look good for us in any event unless we get realistic about the direction of the world economy and about how our own environmental policies hurt our own economic efforts.
Some of you might enjoy this fascinating three page article about China, silver and the Opium Wars, and current China / US relations.
SILVER AND OPIUM
http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFPositionPaper5SilverAndOpium.pdf
Max,
I read your link. It all makes sense. But I’ve been reading the Austrian economists for forty years, and all along they’ve been predicting the imminent demise of the dollar.
When is it gonna happen for real?
Looks like Austrian economics is the same as CAGW.
..
Their predictions never come true
dbstealey,
Fekete’s view is very different from the Austrians’ view. For example, Austrians are believers in the Quantity Theory of Money, which Fekete makes short work of as a non-applicable linear model of a highly nonlinear world.
To your question though, bear in mind that there is not a single example of an irredeemable currency that has survived more than a few decades.
The good news is that each person is able to make his or her own bet as to whether the USDollar will be the exception.
When gold goes into permanent backwardation, that is, when we wake up one morning and there are lots of bids for gold in dollars, but no asks, then all dollar denominated assets won’t fetch a gram of gold. The gold basis (nearest future price – cash price) has been shrinking steadily since the US defaulted in 1971. Gold has been flirting with backwardation, going in and out of it for several years now. For those who choose to see, that hardly inspires confidence in the longevity of the dollar.
But again, we all get to make our bets 🙂
@dbstealey:
It is already 90% done. When on the gold standard, a stamp was 5 cents, gasoline was 25 cents, bread was a dime to 15 cents a loaf and our house was bought for $7500. Now a stamp is one penny shy of 50 cents, gas is $2.50 if Florida (3.50 in California), bread is $1 to $2 a loaf and that house sold for over $80, 000. The dollar is already 90% gone.
EM Smith
Isn’t this dollar decline logarithmic? Like (hypothetical) greenhouse warming? So it’s hard to talk of percentages.
What an interesting development.
Obama’s pressure on the World Bank to refuse loans to 3rd world countries for the purposes of building coal fired power plants has now backfired in a most interesting way.
Is there a single foreign policy initiative that has turned out as intended for this guy? He is a modern day Demosthenes. Dominant orator. Results suck.
“Dominant orator.”
I don’t agree. Our Dear Leader can deliver a decent speech, when he and his teleprompter are well rehearsed. ‘Off the cuff’ efforts are, at best, delivered in halting, rambling monologues that are difficult to listen to.
Ditto!!! He is only a dominant orator to the tone deaf.
This was to be expected. In 1976, I attended a conference where the keynote speaker was the Tanzanian Ambassador to the US. He stated word to the effect, “We do not need your isms whether from the West or the East, but we do need your help.”
The Chinese have learned that lesson which is why they are doing well in Africa and elsewhere and why their infrastructure bank will be a success.
I once was a geological consultant to an entity called Angola LNG. I inquired how the project got started. Turns out Angola went to the IMF for development funds at the end of their civil war. IMF staff flew to Angola and were shocked at the amount of natural gas being flared into the atmosphere from offshore oil platforms. After scolding the Angolans for their “poor world citizenship,” they told the Angolan’s they would give them aid only if they started an LNG project to capture and sell the excess gas. The IMF also said that in addition to the Angolan aid request, they would help fund the LNG project.
As long as the IMF and World Bank want to impose their agendas, countries will seek alternatives and now China can give it to them.
Yes. China is in. Will continue to do so, even with typical air pollution problems and ups and downs financials associated with growth. The West had the same problems. Nothing new.
The West is telling China to stop air pollution and coal burning and CO2 pollution. China is not to blame.
China is doing this because we (The WEST) want our iPhone, iPad, iPod, iEverything Else as cheap as possible.
So we sell coal to China for iEnergy. Plenty of it. So they can produce as much as iJunk as we want.
Now China decided, you know what. You have your iWorld Bank, we can have our iChina Bank. And, well since we have learned how to export iJunk to you, and you like it, we will now export iChina Bank and you will like it. iChina Bank will be much cheaper than the World Bank. At least for awhile.
Dr. Klein:
It’s hard to see how getting someone else to fund (and thereby assume the risk of) a project to monetize an otherwise completely wasted resource was a bad thing for Angola. Sounds a lot like what China plans to do.
The Law of Intended Consequences…..
Obama also turns to China in order hide green waste during recovery of environmentally unfriendly resources, and in America to JournoLists in order hide green disruption during distribution, operation, and recovery of non-renewable technologies.
“Green tainted US backed global banking institutions” ! No wonder “that the developing world is [now] looking to China for infrastructure finance” ! I’ve been talking for years about “Green nails in the coffin of Western ascendancy”, so this comes as no surprise to me !
Agree.
The World Bank and the IMF mandated EIA’s with standards that are far way above what is reasonable to the point one could argue “Blackmail” by those Banks (read the US and the UN). I believe the US and the UN have just been told where to peddle that BS. Entirely predictable given that nations need to develop, not listen to US LW rhetoric and do not need to be lectured.
+1 And it may be China’s turn to control the world’s monetary supply. May be a good thing but given their track record I don’t think so.
With all of this discussion of international trade and finance, I’m surprised no one raised the issue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement secretly negotiated by the Obama administration. Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” has long since shifted from Mexico to Asia yet “free trade” is a rare instance of bipartisan agreement.
Progressivism is anti-growth. Apparently, China has figured out that strength is in growth and now only shares the progressive’s admiration for tyranny with Obama.
Look at the last graph on this webpage. http://pricedingold.com/dow-jones-industrials/ – The DJIA in terms of grams of gold instead of dollars. – It does not take a financial genus to determine that the money they you have after this phony recovery is still worth less than it was in 2007. You may have twice as much in the market but it is actually still not worth it was before this depression started.
Greenpeace will not be able to pressure the Chinese Government as it has been able to successfully pressure Western governments. New World Order indeed. Just not in the West.
Pakistan is to “get” $ 34 billion in energy projects from China, apart from 8 submarines: http://www.dawn.com/news/1176302/chinese-president-to-visit-pakistan-hammer-out-46-billion-deal
The Asia Infrustructure Investment Bank is a well needed paradigm changer for the world and China deserves respect on the world stage for this. Thank god we have nations willing to stand up to the fascism that is so in your face about killing you. It’s simple, we cooperate and prosper or die in a increasingly evident total economic collapse. Obama can’t finish his term, impeach.
From Patrick Moore’s speech in Las Vegas, Greenpeace managed to stop the World Bank financing of the 3 Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, but China was able to build it with their own resources, and it produces 22,500 Megawatts which = 40 coal fired power plants, and they did it without the World Bank.
This is part of what we are talking about…