Guest essay by Eric Worrall
United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, and Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary General of the Commonwealth, have proposed that third world countries should be allowed to pay off their debts, by taking “action” on climate change.
According to The Independent;
Swapping national debt for action on climate change could be the solution we’ve been looking for
The Commonwealth’s proposal for a Multilateral Debt Swap for Climate Action alongside green investment and multilateral action from both developed and developing countries are the actions we need post Paris to halt climate change.
Last month’s global agreement on climate change was a remarkable gift to the world and to future generations. One hundred and eighty-eight countries have submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, setting out what they are prepared to do to reduce emissions and build climate resilience. Developed country governments have reaffirmed their commitment to raise $100 billion a year for climate action, with small and vulnerable countries first on the list for assistance. As the Prime Minister of Tuvalu – a Pacific nation threatened by catastrophic sea level rises – said during the Paris summit: “If you save Tuvalu, you save the world.”
Now the New Year has arrived and it’s time to act on these resolutions. A rapid and sustained flow of climate finance for the vulnerable developing countries is central to managing the climate challenge. Thus far the flow of climate financing has been less than satisfactory. This must change. Climate financing should not lead to a reduction in traditional official development assistance.
That’s why global warming was a top priority of Commonwealth leaders at their recent meeting in Malta. Their Statement on Climate Change provided timely, important political impetus to the Paris Conference. And they generated some good ideas to free up funds for climate action.
Here’s one: swapping national debt for climate change action. Many vulnerable countries are so burdened by debt they simply can’t afford to address global warming. Jamaica, for example, is struggling with a public debt to GDP ratio of 140 per cent. For the Seychelles, it’s 65 per cent. Think what could happen if countries like these lowered their burden by taking action on climate change: they could expand marine protected areas, strengthen coastal defences, reform fisheries policies, promote water conservation, manage coastal zones, invest in renewable energy and create institutions to advance their plans — working their way out of debt at the same time.
What a plan. Unless I missed something, Ban-ki Moon’s plan means third world despots get to fund their armies and secret police, and fill their offshore bank accounts, by running up huge national debts. Then to have those debts “forgiven”, so the tyrants can borrow even more money, all they have to do is to “create new institutions” (employ lots of UN affiliated bureaucrats), restrict access to irrigation, and ruin their domestic fishing industry.
In the eyes of the UN, it is we who are the despots.
And I just saw a large pink creature flying past my window with a loud oink oink as it went.
Hey! That includes the US! Our national debt is close to 19 $trillion. We owe both China and Japan about 1.1 $trillion each. We currently have a president intent on, and succeeding in, killing coal. That has got to be worth at least a $trillion in debt forgiveness, so that knocks our debts to those countries down to about half. I’m sure they won’t mind. After all, we are helping “save the planet”.
Bonkers Moon should read Ottawa’s Carleton University Professor Michael Harts new book “Hubris”, he would go apoplectic, if he is even literate? This book published in late 2015 is a must read.
http://www.amazon.com/Hubris-Troubling-Science-Economics-Politics/dp/0994903804
I bought it and will read it.
If it’s bad you have to weed my garden for the summer.
They don’t pay back their loans anyway. This will clear their debt, attract assistance funds and they, with a triple A rating from Standard and Poors will get bigger loans at lower interest rates.
How about just declaring a GLOBAL universal jubilee! All debt everywhere is forthwith canceled and all economic slaves freed?! The policy is embedded in some old book, somewhere. If I could only remember where I hid my gold. GK
This is the most insidious form of subjugation I’ve ever witnessed. The money is borrowed, one presumes, to make the nation better and the UN undoes that betterment by coercing poverty-level energy opportunities not to the borrowers but to the people of the borrowing nations. Heinous. Thank you, climate science – you have taken us so far… backwards.
I recommend we take KB’s name literally and ban K-Moon.
“Strengthen coastal defences”???
BKM is seriously suggesting that building sea walls to protect themselves (which BTW would have paid for itself in ONE storm in NYC had Mayor Warmie not vetoed it, and is a good idea) should could as debt repayments?
Great idea – I will tell the bank my mortgage payments were redirected to a new kitchen.
Really seems like they’re not hiding the scam any more. AGW is a front for value transfer to the 3rd world – that’s now confirmed by BKM.
Let me correct this statement, Andrew
AGW is a front for value transfer to the 3rd world
AGW is a front for value transfer to the 3rd world dictator bank accounts in the 1st world, greasing the palms of the UN in the transfer.
In 1998, US States won a class action lawsuit against big tobacco over the costs of treating all the people with smoking related diseases who couldn’t pay for their own care. (Never mind that deaths from lung cancer and heart attacks are fairly cheap compared to things like Alzheimers and other diseases of the elderly.)
Funneling money to third world countries through their local dictator has never been an “efficient” process. Paying off their debt will just allow them to build it back up – basically unrestricted funds.
As for the tobacco settlement payouts (still ongoing for eight years or so), the states haven’t done much better, at least in terms of paying for medical care or keeping people away from tobacco.
I have no expectation that the climate settlement money will be put to climate related purposes. Even in cases where climate related problems can be identified….
Quotes above are from http://www.npr.org/2013/10/13/233449505/15-years-later-where-did-all-the-cigarette-money-go
A more comprehensive review is at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021365/
I think those despots would be ill advised to accept Ban-Ki Moon’s gamble for taking action on climate change. Instead, I think they should heed the wisdom of Marilyn Monroe:
The Enviros are glad to die for Gaia’s love.
They delight in fighting fossil fuels
But Dictator’s prefer a UN that gives
And gives expensive jewels.
A shake of the hand
May be quite continental,
But diamonds are a Dictator’s best friend.
A promise may be grand
But it won’t pay the rental
On your mansion’s lot
Or help you with repairs on your yacht.
Money grows cold
As Nations grow old,
And we all lose our charms in the end.
But square-cut or pear-shaped,
These rocks don’t lose their shape.
Diamonds are a Dictator’s best friend.
Tiffany’s!
Cartier!
Black Starr!
Frost Gorham!
Talk to me Harry Winston.
Tell me all about it!
There may come a time
When a lass needs a lawyer,
But diamonds are a Dictator’s best friend.
There may come a time
When a Sec’tary of State employer
Thinks an alliance’s awful nice,
But get that ice or else no dice.
Ban-Ki Moon’s your guy
When carbon trades are high,
But beware when they start to descend.
It’s then that those louses
Go back to their safe-houses.
Diamonds are a Dictator’s best friend.
Time rolls on,
And youth is gone,
And you can’t straighten up when you bend.
But stiff back
Or stiff knees,
You stand straight at Tiffany’s.
Diamonds! Diamonds!
I don’t mean rhinestones!
But diamonds are a Dictator’s best friend.
This may be far more insidious and depraved than first read indicates.
By Moon’s theory, North Korea is the role model.
Now once some UN bureaucrat assigns a CO2 value to each human life, the butchers bill will become apparent.
By crippling all national infrastructure and killing huge numbers of the citizenry, a despot can claim the cancellation of all debt owed for the monies provided to him by the world bank.
So borrow from IMF.
Stash in Swiss Bank.
Can’t payback?
Kill and/or impoverish most of your citizens.
Get more money from IMF.
Classic UN logic.
Remember these are the “experts” who keep bleating” Too Many People on planet”.
No wonder Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is their hero.
The UN shall be outlawed in every free nation, defunded and prosecuted.
Small wonder they want immunity from national laws.
off topic, probably been covered before but amused the hell out of me.
Watching the film Interstellar. Involves NASA, one of the Characters is Dr Mann from NASA- well the real one doesn’t but fun nonetheless.
“This data makes no sense.
I’m sorry.
-What?
Mann, was lying!”
poor old Mann , in real life and fiction,
Is Matt Damon anything like Brad Pitt?
Ban-Ki Moon, and his organisational competency, remind me of the country which decided to phase in the change from driving on the left to driving on the right: Those with odd-numbered plates would switch on week one; those with even-numbered plates would switch on week two.
Reminds me about a section in: Catch 22; By Joseph Heller
“His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap,’ he counseled one and all, and everyone said, ‘Amen.’”
The climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the Sun and the oceans. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. Until a methodology for forcing the Sun and the oceans to provide the ideal climate everywhere all the time has been developed and shown to work then it will be impossible to figure out what the climate change solution is going to cost let alone who is going to have to pay for it. As far as paying for anything goes, the USA is really a very poor nation with a large national debt, trade deficit, and unfunded liabilities. We here in the USA need to pay off our debts and solve our own economic problems before we consider wasting our money on something like climate change. We just do not have the money. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them. A more pressing problem that we should be working on that Mankind can actually solve is Man’s out of control population. If Man does not control his own population then Mother Nature will, catastrophically.
Compelling evidence CO2 has no effect on climate is presented in a peer reviewed paper at http://eae.sagepub.com/content/26/5/841.full.pdf+html
What does cause average global temperature change (97% match since before 1900) is identified at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Why on earth would anyone want to halt climate change?? Do they want a stagnant planet?
Yup, a planet of stag nations – everything’s the same.
[And that is a deer problem for all who want to all nations see progress towards a moving future. .mod]
Climate reparations/wealth redistribution is nothing more than the UN meddling with the governments of sovereign nations. How they can possibly justify their actions being within their charter is beyond me and should be a wake up call to the world. Appointed bureaucrats openly attempting to control world economics into their chosen model should be viewed and treated as a crime.
Only someone not elected by popular vote could come up with in an inane and naive plan such as this.
The magic of “Climate Justice”! Is there any form, or any thing ,it can not do?
Perhaps Ban-Ki Moon would be ah, better advised to buy a few Powerball tickets, it’s now over 900 million US dollars. It would be a start……
michael
Every 50 years the ancient Israelites were supposed to have a year called the Sabbath Jubilee in which all debts were forgive, slaves set free, etc. etc.
But I don’t think there’s any record that this was ever followed, or that it contributed to the economic well-being of the people. So let’s blame all climate catastrophes on this failure to comply!
As the Prime Minister of Tuvalu – a Pacific nation threatened by catastrophic sea level rises – said during the Paris summit: “If you save Tuvalu, you save the world.”
Really? Why doesn’t any journalist call this nonsense out for what it is.
Tuvalu has a population of 10,837 (2012 census). The total land area of the islands of Tuvalu is 26 square kilometres (10 sq mi). They are a nation with UN voting rights yet less people than most suburbs in any large city.
In 2013 the World Bank approved $6 million to upgrade the airport that gets 3 international flights per week. World Bank Statistics outline that in 2010 Tuvalu produced a bottom-tier ranking Gross Domestic Product of $31 million.
Tuvalu land area is growing. The PM of Tuvalu is not telling the truth.
That remarkable gift to the world, the Paris agreement, seems to contain just 2 references to the much vaunted $100b. One is for another junket to agree an increase. The only concrete reference to actually seeing any of the 100b is para 115. The relevant part is “strongly urges developed country Parties to scale up their level of financial support, with a concrete roadmap to achieve the goal of jointly providing USD 100 billion annually by 2020”. One concludes there are no pledges and not even the dreaded ‘roadmap’ to decide such pledges. Since actual pledged monies for Syrian refugees made by various countries has been notably not forthcoming, this ‘gift’ may be a real disappointment.