Tag: Climate boondoggle

If You Think the Colossal Net Zero Spending Will End in 2050 Then These Three Countries Will Soon Set, You Straight

The latest fantasy figure for international climate aid is $300 billion a year, to be paid by a diminishing band of Net Zero fanatical countries (looking at you Europe). But at least, come 2050, when the world is awash with green riches with energy too cheap to meter, it will all be worthwhile, and the scam – pardon – worthwhile investment can stop. If only. Look no further than the three countries that on many counts have already hit Net Zero, namely Suriname, Panama and Bhutan, for guidance on future investment demands.

A dystopian urban landscape with damaged buildings and debris, featuring the text 'NET ZERO 2050' prominently displayed against a dramatic, cloudy sky.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Panoramic view of a modern skyline in Panama City, featuring high-rise buildings along a waterfront with greenery and a curved road.

The latest fantasy figure for international climate aid is $300 billion a year, to be paid by a diminishing band of Net Zero fanatical countries (looking at you Europe). But at least, come 2050, when the world is awash with green riches with energy too cheap to meter, it will all be worthwhile, and the scam – pardon – worthwhile investment can stop. If only. Look no further than the three countries that on many counts have already hit Net Zero, namely Suriname, Panama and Bhutan, for guidance on future investment demands. All three countries are heavily forested and all demand billions of dollars to keep these ‘carbon’ sinks in place. Sustainability is the name of the game, or to put it another way: ‘Nice little forest we got here. Shame if anything happened to it.’

Suriname is a small South American country with a population of just 640,000 and an annual GDP of $4.5 billion. In its latest UN Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) it asks for $4.5 billion to be paid over the next decade to reaffirm its commitment to remaining carbon negative through “forest preservation”. Money is also sought from many other international sources, and the country is a leading light in the cash for ‘climate justice’ shake down. Panama is also keen on maintaining its carbon neutrality status, but, needless to say, such virtue does not come cheap. In its latest NDC, the country seems wary of producing cash figures but there is one mention of the need for $1.23 billion for 21 adaptation initiatives. A recently announced plan for a dedicated nature conservancy plan calls for new, additional, predictable, assessable and non-debt increasing international aid. In other words, a regular one-way lorry load of cash.

As the Daily Sceptic reported recently, the big winner in this giant Net Zero cash protection scheme is Bhutan. This small, landlocked country in the eastern Himalayas has huge hydroelectric power, while 93% of the land is carpeted with carbon dioxide absorbing forest. As the poster country for Net Zero, its demands for waterfalls of cash are suitably impressive. With a population of only 800,000 and a GDP of around $3 billion, it notes in its latest NDC that it requires “continued and predictable” financial support amounting to $13.7 billion over the next decade.

In the land of the Net Zero cult, cash might not be God, but it is a deeply religious experience. Sadly, the collection plate has come back a bit light of late. In America, President Trump has ruthlessly cut federal funds for both domestic and international Net Zero boondoggles. The United Nations, which is the ringmaster for pumping up climate panic, is talking about financial collapse after the Americans withdrew the feeding bottle. Indeed, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently spoke of the organisation being on the “brink of bankruptcy”. But then this particularly clownish act often gives a passable impression of complete derangement having recently claimed that the era of “global boiling” had arrived.

No doubt some international aid does environmental good in the developing world once it has passed through the sticky fingers of those on the crowded bandwagon from politicians to NGOs. But the stories of waste and misappropriation are legendary. In 2023, a database of ‘climate finance’ was compiled by Reuters in collaboration with researchers from Big Local News. Drawn together from UN data filed by countries signed up to what was then a $100 billion annual pledge, it highlighted spending from 2015-2020 on new coal and gas-fired power stations, along with airport and hotel developments. At the time, it seems that a number of countries were sticking a ‘climate’ tag on already existing foreign aid commitments.

At least oil and gas plants are more useful than hopeless wind turbines. Different considerations were no doubt applied for the Italian contributions that helped a retailer set up a chain of chocolate and gelato stores across Asia. Persuading an Italian to open an ice cream shop does not normally require subsidies from the taxpayer. Meanwhile, the Belgians chipped in with funding for a romantic film about a green activist and a rugby-playing logger set in the rainforest. The film does not appear to have had a large distribution but one can only hope that in the end the chap managed to get his log over.

Getting screwed is the name of the game for long-suffering taxpayers in the developed world. In the last 20 years, average income in the Maldives has quintupled to around $19,000, helped by a massive growth in the tourism industry. The Maldives is one of those chains of Pacific islands where constant mainstream fears of inundation by sea level rise are matched by frequently ignored scientific data showing overall land growth. There has been huge recent development of infrastructure including hotels and airports. The country promises to reduce its emissions, but this is said to be “conditional” on collecting “adequate international support”. Primary areas for support are said to be renewable electricity and waste management. Many resort hotels continue to pump some untreated sewage into the sea.

The Maldives offers an idyllic tropical vacation for high-end tourists. It is not immediately clear why they, along with the increasingly wealthy owners of local businesses, cannot pay for necessary sewage facilities, rather than poorer taxpayers thousands of miles away who might only dream of such a holiday.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Bloomberg News Admits Carmakers to Save Billions in Trump Emissions Rollback

Who knew that removing ridiculous eco-extremist regulations could help auto manufacturers save money? Even the green freaks at Bloomberg News had to concede that point to President Donald Trump.

A black Ford Mustang sports car parked on a winding road surrounded by green trees and mountains under a clear blue sky.

Who knew that removing ridiculous eco-extremist regulations could help auto manufacturers save money? Even the green freaks at Bloomberg News had to concede that point to President Donald Trump.

NewsBusters has the story.

Bloomberg News reporters David Welch, Keith Naughton, and Keith Laing admitted in an eye-popping September 7 story that Trump’s “push to cut federal sales incentives and roll back emissions standards is shaping up to be a multibillion-dollar gift to Detroit’s automakers as they shift investments into gasoline-fueled cars.”

Specifically, according to the report, the deregulatory push “is clearing the way for Detroit’s legacy automakers and their traditional rivals to reallocate billions of dollars earmarked for EVs and other costs linked to pollution rules.” 

Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley reportedly told Bloomberg News that the Trump deregulation agenda had “the potential to unlock a multibillion-dollar opportunity over the next two years.”

Contrast this with the media’s support for the Green New Dealers of Team Biden over the past four years.

Almost two years ago, Reuters reported that automakers were facing $14 billion in fines as a result of then-President Biden’s proposal to hike fuel-economy standards.

Now, automakers have the ability to allocate much-needed resources towards production as opposed to government mandate compliance. For example, Welch, Naughton and Laing estimated that Ford was reallocating a whopping $1.5 billion it was spending this year alone on regulatory credit-purchase commitments to produce “gas-powered models and hybrids.” 

Read the full story here.

Matt Ridley: The Climate boondoggle is the biggest transfer of money from the poor to the rich since Sheriff of Nottingham

In a droll, but scathing assessment, Matt Ridley calculates that even in a best case scenario, with the most generous estimate of how useful a wind turbine might be, the people in the UK are spending £25 billion a year to reduce global emissions of CO2 by 0.00002 or two hundredths of one percent.

A desolate urban landscape featuring abandoned buildings overrun with greenery and debris, set under a foggy, muted sky.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

A child with a backpack stands in a flooded urban street, surrounded by debris and derelict buildings, under a gloomy sky.

The poor today are even paying to help the very rich people of 2100 get slightly richer

A professional headshot of a man with glasses, short hair, and a slight smile against a dark background.
Matt Ridley

In a droll, but scathing assessment, Matt Ridley calculates that even in a best case scenario, with the most generous estimate of how useful a wind turbine might be, the people in the UK are spending £25 billion a year to reduce global emissions of CO2 by 0.00002 or two hundredths of one percent.

At that rate getting the world to net zero will cost £100 trillion a year – or the entire world’s economic output.

The numbers burn like the Hindenburg, yet serious people keep a straight face, like we are living in an episode of Monty Python. The Parliamentarians pretend to save the world, the scientists research a pretend world, and the media pretend to be journalists. 

Excerpts from Matt Ridley on X:

The climate boondoggle is one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history: never in the field of human commerce, or at least not since the sheriff of Nottingham, has so much tax been paid by people so poor to people so rich. Perhaps Ed Miliband is hoping that by giving lots of money to rich people, he can then impose a wealth tax on them in a sort of economic perpetual-motion machine.

There appears to be no end to his generosity to the rich. He has recently announced an increase in subsidies for electric cars, electric heating and electricity bills, and this week he quietly let slip that he will raise the amount he pays for new wind farms and index-link the payment for an extra five years.

What’s that? You don’t have a wind farm? Bad luck. Landowners who do can trouser £150,000 per wind turbine per year in rent for twenty to thirty years. One is arguing in court that £10m a year for his wind farm is not enough. …

Ridley quotes the latest official State of the Climate Report and asks:”Wheres the horror, Ed?”

The state of the climate report, which he presented to Parliament last week, says only that “recent decades have been warmer, wetter and sunnier than the 20th Century” with earlier springs and more “lawn-cutting days”. Mostly good news unless you hate lawn-mowing. There has been more warming in winter than summer, so less frost, less snow and fewer “heating days”: good news given that death rates spike in cold weather much more than in hot weather.

It says we now have 10% more rain, most of it in winter but the report can only “suggest a slight increase” in heavy rainfall while finding a “downward trend” in both average wind speed and maximum gust speed. On balance, good news. The only bad news is that sea level is rising, still very slowly – about a foot per century – but perhaps with a slight acceleration.

The inescapable pointlessness of the wind power boondoggle is there for all to see:

…let’s do the sums: Britain produces 0.8% of the world’s emissions. Electricity supplies roughly 20% of our energy and wind supplied about 25% of our electricity last year.

Let’s be generous and assume that windmills cut emissions by maybe 60% over their lifetimes compared with gas turbines…

It follows that Britain’s wind farms are achieving a reduction of 0.008 x 0.20 x 0.25 x 0.6 = 0.0002, or two hundredths of one percent of global emissions. That is what £25 billion a year, paid by you in direct and indirect subsidies according to the Renewable Energy Foundation, is buying you. At that rate getting the world to net zero will cost £100 trillion a year – or the entire world’s economic output.

He cites Richard Tol’s study showing that even if the world warms by (an unbelieveable) 3 degrees, global GDP will only be about 2% smaller than it would have otherwise been. And total GDP is expected to grow massively, either way.

Alternatively, if we go by the IPCC‘s business-as-usual model, and if  “…we forget about climate change and just let the fossil-fuel economy rip” the average person will be an “astonishing 9.8 times richer in 2100 even with the effects of rapid climate change, instead of 10.4 times without it”.

Matt Ridley:

So Mr Miliband is asking you to reduce your standard of living today to save a bunch of very, very wealthy future people from being slightly less – but still very, very – wealthy. Your prosperity is sacrificed to their posterity. This is therefore yet another way in which he is transferring money from the poor to the rich. Was he sheriff of Nottingham in a previous life?

Read it in full on X, there is a lot more —  or in a somewhat edited version in the Daily Mail, which Matt warns contains errors, introduced by editors while he was away.

Image by emely krause from Pixabay