Guest essay by Eric Worrall
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim claims that investors who currently hold $40 Trillion worth of government bonds and other low yield investments would be better investing the money into renewables.
Climate change offers huge investment opportunity, Al Gore tells World Bank
by Sophie Hares
Climate change should be grasped as an opportunity to attract vast capital flows into low-carbon investments, create jobs and spur economic growth, rather than viewed as a money-absorbing burden, top officials and experts say.
Trillions of dollars are potentially available for climate investments and countries like India are blazing a trail in bringing cheap solar power to millions, but making sure the world’s poorest benefit will prove a big challenge, a World Bank meeting heard late last week.
“It’s the biggest opportunity in the history of the world – it’s the biggest investment opportunity, but we have to have a clear vision, we have to have policy leadership… to bring the world community together to get the financing that is needed to move the momentum more quickly,” former US Vice President Al Gore told the discussion.
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said financing climate action could offer a more lucrative home for $US8.5 trillion ($11.2 trillion) in negative interest rate bonds, $US24.5 trillion in very low-yielding government-type bonds and a further $US8 trillion in cash, though a clear strategy still needed to be hammered out.
“Quite apart from what you think about climate change, there are opportunities for investments that will give you higher yield than any of those investments in which over $US40 trillion is sitting right now,” Kim said.
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The key is how to unlock financing for economic growth that also brings climate benefits, according to former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.
Friday’s launch of a $US2 billion green bond fund backed by the International Finance Corporation and asset management firm Amundi could help drive climate investments in developing countries, she added.
“Thinking that climate action is expensive and a burden, and is a responsibility, is so five minutes ago,” she said. “The exponential growth of technologies and the drop in prices (have) made this the best opportunity – and this is (the) story of growth of this century.”
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It is one thing when diehard old greens like Al Gore, or former UN apparatchiks like Figueres make silly claims about renewable opportunities.
It is a totally different matter when someone whose job is to oversee the investment of billions of dollars of public money expresses enthusiasm for squandering that money on risky investments whose profitability seems totally dependent on the fickle financial support of politicians.
Real investment opportunities don’t need special measures to “unlock” financing – as soon as news gets out, people rush to invest of their own free will.
“Real investment opportunities don’t need special measures to “unlock” financing – as soon as news gets out, people rush to invest of their own free will.”
Isn’t there an old saying, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” ?
It seems that these people (politicians, etc) want to mandate us to march in lockstep to their door. With money in hand for them. For everyones benefit, of course…
By keeping Africa poor by refusing to let them us real energy, they insure that its population will continue to double every 20 years and flood into Europe. I guess that’s the plan.
$40 Trillion? A minor ‘investment.’
Some will go to infrastructure.
Some will go to … well, maybe they will find out where at some point. Some will make people rich.
And some will come out of ‘investor’s” pockets, never to return.
Even if there were a decent return to be had, who then will hold those 40 trillion in bonds? Central banks have not engaged in QE without a reason. The world has run out of people willing to hold additional financial assets.
The world bank used to be about financing infrastructure in third world countries.
Now its mission is to use socialist environmentalism to turn all countries into third world countries. Still the same mission, invest in poor people, as making more of them.
They need to be defunded now that Jim Yong Kim has been re-elected for another five year term.
It must be crazy to work there. At one time, you are investing in big dam projects supplying huge amounts of electricity to non-electrified countries. Now, you are investing in transgender windmills.
Bernie Madoff, eat your heart out.
“It’s the biggest opportunity in the history of the world” — Al Gore
There was another guy named Al Gore who said we only had 10 years to save the planet — and that time is up. These two Al Gores need to get together and sort things out.
This is fine if the US Government does what the Spanish Government did, and guarantee payment of interest and repayment of principal.
…because the Oligarchy can profit tremendously from negative yields on such investments.
The biggest challenge for this scam is how to unlock the bank accounts of The Mark…..
Skepticism is a real good thing, if you don’t want to be conned.
Perhaps Gore, Kim, and Figueres should try to persuade big political donors like Steyer, Bloomberg, Soros, and Buffett to waste their money on low-carbon climate investments instead of on failed candidates like Hillary Clinton. They might even get better than a zero return on their investments… maybe.
People say to me: “So you think you know more about climate change than the experts?” I say: “Apparently!” After reading this article, I can now say that I know more about economics than these so called experts. Unfortunately, that is not hard to do.
Absolutely. There is a demand for “experts” to “speak out” about global warming (and economics). They are rewarded, their careers advance. They and their families are rewarded financially.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair.
So many of these theories ignore basic science of how chemicals react in different environments. The first scare tactic was that increasing Carbon Dioxide would create another Ice Age…because Carbon Dioxide is what Dry Ice is made of. Then moved to Global Warming because of it’s refectory abilities and Greenhouse theories came. Acid Rain and Acidification of the Oceans came as the next scare tactics…then it was found that Acid Rain was beneficial to plant growth and studies showed how crustaceans shells get thicker and shellfish shells only get thinner with over 1,500 ppm CO2 in the Oceans salt water. That fish are not affected much and Whales can withstand over 2,000 ppm. The Coral Reefs are not damaged by Acidification as the extremist projected it to cause, it’s the raising of the build up of the Coral to where UV Rays effects them and the raising of the Oceanic tectonic plates…and stupid boaters and divers damaging them.
I’m not an economics genius, but I understand stupid investing.
Al Gore is trying to get 40 Trillion to fight Global Warming…on Facebook too.
Can you say: ‘FLUSH’?
And another forty-trillion goes swirling down the pipes. And, once again, we’ll get an absolute donut hole for it.
Bill deNye Science guy wants his piece. https://www.startengine.com/startup/rayton-solar
The English language is a wonderful thing with a seemingly limitless lexicon, one which suits all occasions. Let’t pull out just one of the words here – DAFT.
Yes, DAFT, is a good fit.
If the World Bank operated as a business it would either be bankrupt or closed due to unethical lending practices. It is nothing more than a funnel to redistribute money as the Marxist ideologists see fit. Why the US continues contributing to the World Bank is a mystery.
Invest 4 thousand times less in the MSR 4thGen nuclear R&D and you can forget renewables.