Climate Change Prevention Funding Follies

                The University of Zurich’s Axel Michaelowa studies climate aid grants. That’s right, it’s not enough to study the climate itself, there appears to be a pressing need to study what happens to the large amounts of cash and other booty bequeathed to various entities around the world in the battle against climate change. Michaelowa conducted a study four years ago in order to track what became of specific climate grants.

                What he discovered is neither pretty nor surprising. “There was a huge misrepresentation, governments were actually really not able to report properly” on what became of their aid to help countries reduce carbon dioxide emissions. His study uncovered a large number of “projects without any conceivable climate change connotation.” Among these was Belgium funding for a “love movie festival,” in Africa, over a decade ago. Also among them was a U.S.-funded study on Savannah elephant sounds, and uniforms for park guardians in Central America courtesy of aid from Spain.

                Romain Weikmans, a researcher at Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, described this governmental non-accountability by saying, “It’s really a process of lying the more you can.” He and Timmons Roberts, a professor at Brown, studied 5,201 projects mentioned by developed nations and claimed that 3,444 of them “did not explicitly link project activities to addressing climate vulnerability.” (Emphasis/italics mine). “Climate finance accounting is the wild west,” Roberts said. Weikmans said that, a few years ago, a 33 million euro pledge from one nation suddenly doubled on the books “thanks only to methodological changes in accounting.” Much like the data on global warming itself!

                It shouldn’t come as a shock to scientists or professors- or anyone else for that matter- that this occurs. Governments constantly utilize “creative” accounting methods and other mathematical slights-of-hand to come up with figures on revenue, spending, taxation, unemployment, current fund levels, et. al.

                Climate change spending has morphed into a feel good global poker game with all proceeds going to… charity? Well, somewhere.

                John Kerry (U.S.): “Well, that’s a nice pot there boys… Francois, we’ll see your $100 billion and raise you a Barbara Streisand concert in Myanmar and an interpretative center on Mt. Kilimanjaro!”