US budget cuts may scupper the chances of a global climate treaty that Barack Obama has in sight, writes Keith Bryer.
On the eve of a much-heralded UN conference on the Earth’s climate in Paris, one US House of Representatives budget committee has declared its intent to slow the Green Gravy Train.
Of course, it did not stop the conference delegates from flying to Charles de Gaulle airport outside the City of Light, pouring who knows how much “deadly” carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
However, these budget cuts may scupper the chances of the global climate treaty that President Barack Obama has set his heart on signing as a last hurrah of his administration.
An Appropriations Bill for the State Department and Foreign Operations (that is an application for budget approval) stops civil servants from using taxpayer’s money to pay the Green Climate Fund, the Clean Technology Fund and the Strategic Climate Fund.
Refused money
Bless the representatives’ hearts; they also refused money to the biggest boondoggle of them all, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That organisation plays fast and loose with the spurious concept of science being about consensus.
The committee responsible for the cuts called these three money soaks “lower priority international programmes”. They were cut, it said, to meet top priorities like, “funding security activities around the world”, support for key US allies and increased funding “for embassy and diplomatic security”. Even Greens may find it difficult, if not fruitless, to argue against this.
If the cuts go through, the decision may put the brakes on the environmental bandwagon. The chances are good. Charlie Hebdo, Tunisia, Isis, and the shootings in Tennessee, are top of mind. It will only take one fanatic blowing him or herself up in Germany to make Green issues fade into oblivion even there.
For Republicans at least, national security trumps all. As the chairperson of the committee put it, the money was for “critical endeavours – bolstering the fight against terror, strengthening (US) allies, helping innocent lives facing conflict and strife, and protecting our democracy, our people, and our way of life.”
Climate change programmes cannot compete with that.
It is astonishing how much money has been poured into the Green Climate Fund since 2011 when it was established. More astonishing still is the amount of money it wants. Its declared aim is to raise $100 billion (R1.2 trillion) a year from the US government and a public suitably terrified that their way of life will destroy the planet. Obama has already pledged the US government will give it $3bn. Whether he can make such promises binding on his successors is a moot point.
Mantra
Other countries seem to have swallowed the mantra that carbon dioxide is a poison. More than 30 have together pledged $10bn, many of them scarcely able to do so.
All going well, the Clean Technology Fund will not get the $171 million it thought it would get to finance its schemes, and the Strategic Climate Fund will not get $60m.
The IPCC can no longer expect a dollop of dollars from the US taxpayer, either – at least from this budget.
The writing was on the wall back in February when the Congressional Research Service predicted that US Congress was concerned about “climate-related budget requests: fiscal constraints, potential for misuse by inefficient and bloated bureaucracies, uncertain results, and uncertainties in climate science.
“Prevailing scientific research on the current and future impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate exhibits varying degrees of analytical uncertainty,” it said.
“The lack of definitiveness in some data and in certain model projections has been offered by some as a reason to postpone and/or reconsider both domestic and international climate change assistance policies and programmes.”
With a bit of luck, all this demonstrates admirable common sense by these elected representatives of US citizens who suspect that climate change has become an opportunity for politicians to raise more taxes and provide jobs for more bureaucrats.
Party is over
If this view is correct, then the political environmentalists’ party is over, whatever is decided or “pledged” when the great Green-and-Good gather in Paris later this year.
Of course, just one Appropriations Committee is not enough to deliver a death blow to the climate change bandwagon. But it is a start.
There are enough real problems facing the world right now, without panicking about a disaster sometime in the future predicted by computer models that cannot determine next year’s weather.
Then there is the major heresy of the church of Gaia environment, a heresy that led to the excommunication of the Danish environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg. He dared to make the point that spending billions on fighting the climate would not only be a waste of money, but it ignores far more serious and immediate problems, such as poverty in the developing world.
It is a safe bet that people who worry about their next meal have no time to be concerned about the chances of climate change a century hence.
* Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media.
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