For those who claim there’s no money in global warming, a new report by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) shows the private sector and governments spent $391 billion in 2014 on “low-carbon and climate-resilient growth.”
Governments mostly in Western Europe, East Asia and the U.S. spent $148 billion backing green energy and leveraging $243 billion in private sector funding, according to a report by CPI. The group says some $13.5 trillion in green energy schemes is needed for countries to comply with pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
“There is more money than ever before being invested in low carbon and climate resilient action,” CPI’s Barbara Buchner told Climate Change News. “At the same time, more needs to happen.”
CPI says $16.5 trillion in spending is needed to meet the United Nations’ goal of limiting future warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. The report underscores just how much money there is in the “global warming” industry, which contrasts claims made by activists that there’s only money in promoting fossil fuels.
“If countries get their domestic policy frameworks right, that really can trigger a big change in making money flow,” Buchner said.
“The first step to addressing the climate crisis is to stop funding the problem,” said 350.org executive director May Boeve. “Ending fossil fuel subsidies and other dirty finance is the clearest way that G20 countries can help build momentum for the climate talks in Paris. As hundreds of institutions continue to join the fossil fuel divestment movement it’s time for governments to follow suit and stop funding climate destruction.”
For years, activists have claimed governments across the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing fossil fuels every year - a recent report says governments spent $452 billion on fossil fuels this year.
Environmentalists hope that highlighting the scale of fossil fuels subsidies will build support for using that money to fund green energy and other global warming programs. Even United Nations officials have jumped on the bandwagon by pushing for ending fossil fuel subsidies and funding green programs.
“The first step to addressing the climate crisis is to stop funding the problem,” May Boeve, head of the activist group 350.org, said of fossil fuel subsidies. “Ending fossil fuel subsidies and other dirty finance is the clearest way that G20 countries can help build momentum for the climate talks in Paris.”
Even if it’s true fossil fuels get $452 billion in subsidies a year, activists are hesitant to point out to the growing size of the global warming industry. Funding for global warming programs rose 18 percent in 2014, while fossil fuel subsidies have fallen 42 percent since 2012.
Activist groups have also been raking in more cash than groups skeptical of global warming as the issue gains more prominence in national policy debates.
Global warming skepticism only raised “$46 million annually across 91 conservative think tanks,” according to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Andrew Follett. “That’s almost 6 times less than Greenpeace’s 2011 budget of $260 million, and Greenpeace is only one of many environmental groups.
By Michael W. Chapman | November 12, 2015 | 1:47 PM EST
LiUNA President Terry O’Sullivan.
(CNSNews.com) In reaction to President Barack Obama’s decision to not allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built, Terry O’Sullivan, the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA!), said Obama had “once again” thrown “hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus” while “doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change.”
“His actions are shameful,” said O’Sullivan in a press release. “The president may be celebrated by environmental extremists, but with this act, President Obama has also solidified a legacy as a pompous, pandering job killer.”
Last week, President Obama announced his decision to kill the pipeline proposal because Secretary of State John Kerry and the State Department had informed him that Keystone XL “would not serve the national interest of the United States.”
Obama also stressed the necessity for America to “transition” to a “clean energy economy,” and added, “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership. And that’s the biggest risk we face—not acting.”
LiUNA’s President Terry O’Suillivan said, “President Obama today [Nov. 6] demonstrated that he cares more about kowtowing to green-collar elitists than he does about creating desperately needed, family-supporting, blue-collar jobs. After a seven-year circus of cowardly delay, the President’s decision to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline is just one more indication of an utter disdain and disregard for salt-of-the-earth, middle-class working Americans.”
“We are dismayed and disgusted that the president has once again thrown the members of LIUNA, and other hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus of his vaunted ‘legacy,’ while doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change,” said O’Sullivan. “His actions are shameful.”
O’Sullivan also criticized Obama’s remarks about Keystone XL that the construction jobs it would create are “temporary, and added, “Ironically, the very temporary nature of the president’s own job seems to be fueling a legacy of doing permanent harm to middle- and working class families.”
“From this decision on the Keystone XL, to the attack on quality healthcare through the so-called ‘Cadillac Tax,’ to his efforts to ship good jobs overseas through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Barack Obama’s disdain for working people is evident,” said LiUNA’s O’Sullivan.
“The President may be celebrated by environmental extremists, but with this act, President Obama has also solidified a legacy as a pompous, pandering job killer,” said O’Sullivan.
The Keystone XL pipeline would have run from Canada down through the Midwest United States to refineries in Texas and Illinois, and to a distribution center in Oklahoma.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline “could support 42,000 jobs and put $2 billion in workers’ pockets.”
LiUNA, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, was founded in 1903 and currently has 557,999 members. It is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Terry O’Sullivan has been president of LiUNA since 2000.
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See Patrick Moore, co counder of Greeenpeace address the GPWF on the misguided demonization of CO2.
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The following resolution was released yesterday by the Schiller Institute, with the intention of rapidly collecting signatures from qualified professionals, political leaders, and ordinary citizens internationally. The main posting of the resolution can be found here, as well as the downloadable leaflet for signatures.
The conditions of life for billions of people depend upon rejecting the agenda being presented at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris this December. The COP21 Paris initiative to adopt a legally binding agreement to reduce CO2 emissions must be rejected on two grounds: the scientific reality that mankind’s activity is not going to cause catastrophic climate change, and the very real, lethal consequences of the CO2 reduction programs being demanded.
There is no legitimate basis for having the COP21 conference. Put an end to this now!
Despite the climate-change narrative being presented by an extremely well-funded, top-down propaganda campaign, there is an immense amount of solid scientific evidence which clearly contradicts and/or refutes the claims of coming catastrophic climate change caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. For example, satellite measurements have shown that there has been no average rise in global temperatures for over 18 years, despite the fact that human greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing at an accelerating rate. This underscores the reality that the climate simply does not respond to CO2 levels in the way claimed by climate alarmists; said otherwise, the Earth’s climate system is not highly sensitive to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Because many climate models are using these false assumptions of high climate sensitivity to CO2, the predictions of these climate models have been consistently wrong, and with each year they are diverging further from reality. The gradual changes in the climate that have occurred over the recent decades, and the gradual changes which will continue to occur in the future, are not and will not be a cause for alarm. Most of these changes are natural, and any impact mankind may have would be relatively minor. A healthy and growing world economy will be able to adapt to these changes.
We must also recognize that CO2 is not a pollutant - it is an essential part of the biosphere. Because the present atmospheric CO2 levels are well below the optimum for plant growth, human-caused increases in CO2 concentrations are already contributing to increases in agricultural productivity and natural plant growth - creating a measurably greener planet.
But the Paris 2015 summit is not only about nations potentially wasting time and resources on a phantom problem existing only inside computer models - the ugly reality is that the CO2 reduction programs being proposed would increase poverty, lower living conditions, and accelerate death rates around the world. The world simply cannot support a growing population with improving conditions of life using only solar, wind, and other forms of so-called “green” energy.
More to the point, this scheme is being intensely promoted by modern followers of the population reduction ideology popularized by Thomas Malthus. Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund/World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have repeatedly declared that current human population is billions of individuals beyond the Earth’s “carrying capacity,” and must therefore be reduced by some billions of people. The present push for a CO2 reduction program is deeply rooted in this Malthusian ideological motivation. But Malthus was wrong in the Eighteenth Century, and his followers are wrong today.
Energy-intensive scientific, technological, and economic growth is essential to human existence. This can be measured by transitions to higher levels of energy flux-density, per capita and per area. Such progress, growth, and development is a universal right, and CO2 emissions are presently a vital part of that process for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. The adoption of a legally binding CO2 reduction scheme at the COP21 conference in Paris will condemn billions of people to a lower quality of life, with higher death rates, greater poverty, and no ability to exercise their inherent human right to participate in the creation of a better future for society as a whole.
This is deeply immoral.
For these reasons the CO2 reduction scheme of the COP21 conference in Paris must be rejected.