He may as well pile up $3 billion in cash on the White House lawn and set a match to it.
The administration will pledge $3 billion to help poor countries adapt to the effects of global warming, a White House official said Friday — the second high-profile announcement on climate change to come this week during President Barack Obama’s trip abroad.
The promised money for a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund will lend momentum to Obama’s hopes for reaching an international climate change agreement next year.
“It is in our national interest to help vulnerable countries to build resilience to climate change,” the White House official said. “More resilient communities are less likely to descend into instability or conflict in the aftermath of extreme climate events, needing more costly interventions to restore stability and rebuild. Building resilience also helps safeguard our investments in many areas, including food security, health, education and economic growth.”
The upcoming announcement will be timed to coincide with this weekend’s G20 summit in Australia. It comes just days before a Nov. 20 Green Climate Fund pledging conference in Berlin.
But the pledge will face major opposition from the Republicans who will control Congress’ purse strings starting in January.
“I think it would be hard to get that authorized right now,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is expected to chair the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign operations. “I think it will be very difficult, given what’s going on in the world right now, to put that ahead of the fires that are burning all over the world.”
Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, also cast doubt on Congress’ appetite for that kind of spending on Obama’s climate goals. “The best thing you can do in the developing world is to help people with a growing economy, and anything that the president does that makes energy more expensive in those areas hurts the economy and hurts that people that live there,” he said in an interview.
As of now, the Green Climate Fund is in a limbo of sorts. They expected governments to contribute about $100 billion a year, but current donations amount to only a small fraction of that.The big question, of course, is who would get the cash and how would it be spent? Apparently, major industrialized countries are not chipping in enough cash for th Fund to work, so the Fund managers are looking to the private sector to ante up. As you can imagine, there isn't much interest in throwing money away on projects that don't promise much of a return.
It's just one more UN climate boondoggle that will waste taxpayer money on corrupt and incompetent bureaucracies - if the Republican s are dumb enough to approve it.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/11/obama_to_throw_away_3_billion_to_the_green_climate_fund.html#ixzz3J6FIsll1
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