Climate Aid: The $39 bn industry, mostly used to slow developing countries

Climate Analytics say that developed nations have paid $35.9 billion dollars into the UN Aid program called FastStart. This was the project rescued from the aftermath of the 2009 Copenhagen climate convention.  Somehow $3 billion of private finance has been tossed in as well, making it nearly $39 billion since late 2009.

As usual, when other-people’s-money is spent on the poorest of the poor, the poor seem to get no say, and not much use out of it either.

[Bloomberg] “Seventy-one percent of the total finance went to emission-reduction ventures rather than adaptation projects such as water conservation or flood defense, today’s report shows.”

Sooner or later, the aid-recipients are going to suffer through a flood or a drought (thanks to climate-sameness). But two thirds of this aid money won’t add up to a dime’s worth of protection. Seventy percent of the funds were used to stop emissions of a fertilizing trace gas instead of preparing people against the ravages of the weather. Indeed most of the money was spent reducing something that would be considered an asset if not for the decree of climate models that we already know are wrong.

Hey, but it’s only $27 billion or so wasted.

A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon we’ll be talking real money.

There are a lot of things we don’t know about climate but we do know CO2 emissions are strongly linked to GDP (see the UNEP graph below). Countries which don’t emit much CO2, don’t have much purchasing power (or health, wealth or electricity either). So Joy! There’s a stronger link between CO2 and wealth, than CO2 and the weather.

There is more evidence that reducing CO2 emissions will keep poor people poor than there is that it will change the climate.

 

CO2-emissions versus GDP graph Source: UNEP (click to enlarge).

Showing all the economic savvy that got the EU where it is today, Europeans have coughed up even more money than they promised to give.

Japan paid the most.

UPDATE:  See here and here for the breakdown for Japan, USA, NZ etc in more detail (just a table).

Strangely for a multibillion dollar project there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about FastStart. A quick search turns up atwo year old page by The Australian Government. I wrote about that in 2011. Back then there were lots of mysteries about the funding, and things haven’t got much better.

The Climate Analytics group realize it didn’t work out that well:

One key feature was that the vast majority of the finance (more than 71%) was given for climate mitigation projects, leaving the world’s most vulnerable countries lacking the money badly needed to cope with the impacts of climate change they are already experiencing. “The world’s smallest and most vulnerable countries are not the cause of climate change, but they will be the hardest hit by the impacts. Yet the vast majority of Fast Start Finance public money has gone into mitigation projects, with little spent on adaptation. There needs to be a balanced approach for a long–‐term regime,” said de Marez.

Could it be that governments just rebadged other funds and grants and repackaged them so they could be called “climate aid”, and their government would pass the UN “good citizen” test? What if money that might have been used for foreign aid in health, microfinance or education was used to reduce the wealth of some of the poorest people in the world instead?

And all in the vain hope of warding off bad weather.

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 62 ratings

89 comments to Climate Aid: The $39 bn industry, mostly used to slow developing countries

  • #
    mpcraig

    Does anybody know what the $27B for emissions reductions was actually spent on? That seems like a lot. Was it all spent in developing nations?

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    • #
      mpcraig

      For my country, here is what they say about the $1.2B over three years we are committed 2011-2013:

      “Most of Canada’s support was channeled through multilateral institutions, given their reach and ability to achieve results in an efficient manner. These organizations are transparent, accountable, and have high fiduciary, social and environmental standards.”

      What do you think my chances are of finding a detailed report on how it was spent to support the assertion of transparency and accountability?

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      • #
        Speedy

        MPCraig

        “Developing countries” with sketchy auditing standards, I’d suggest…

        Cheers,

        Speedy.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        You should be able to request the details from the Government Audit Office (or equivalent in Canada).

        All Government budgets, and projects mounted under those budgets, must supply details on how the money was spent. Those details may not be very detailed, but you should be able to follow a chain of references to find the real expenditure records.

        Bureaucrats don’t make it easy, but they do want to stay out of court, so the information will be there, somewhere. Good Luck.

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        • #
          Tel

          If they were even remotely serious about auditing, the whole lot would be published in electronic form on a government website, on a regular basis.

          There’s absolutely nothing preventing this from happening, other than a lack of interest in transparency.

          They should be forced to meet exactly the same standard that the Australian Tax Office demands that business meets right now, with tax deductable expenses.

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    • #

      The link to the Australian projects in 2011 contains a list and a map with pointers to lots of very poor countries.

      20

  • #
    Peter Miller

    This is the UN, right?

    This is one of the most bloated, pointless and expensive bureaucracies in the world’s history and run by people clearly incapable of holding down a job in the real world.

    As to where the money went? The answer is money heaven, scattered around in a way that did almost absolutely nothing useful, but made a lot of unworthy individuals in the Third World very well off in addition, of course, to the bureaucrats ‘managing’ these funds.

    Of course, you cannot find out much about how the money was spent, as disappearing into money heaven is not even acceptable in the UN, so expect a long, complex, wooly explanation, acceptable to gullible national politicians and encoded in a language indecipherable to all except those super-bureaucrats who invented it.

    Entrenched super bureaucrats ‘working’ for non-national ‘aid’ organisations, who cannot be fired as they have ensured there is no such mechanism, can be relied to waste money on a hitherto unprecedented scale, if given the opportunity. It is a toss up which is the most overpaid, useless bureaucratic ineptocracy, the UN or the EU.

    Such is the incredible financial waste during these days of the Carbon Inquisition.

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    • #
      Joe V.

      It is a toss up which is the most overpaid, useless bureaucratic ineptocracy, the UN or the EU.

      Each in their own special way.

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      • #
        Dennis

        Is there a difference, isn’t the EU the creation of the UN left new world order freaks?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      As soon as any Government “donates” money to an NGO, or subsidises a “project” undertaken by an NGO, you can bet that the NGO’s real purpose is to launder the money so it can be spent on things that should not appear on the Government books.

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    • #
      Dennis

      The United Nations was formed to look after WW2 refugees and it should never have been funded beyond that objective. To allow the UN to become a multi-department almost global government with no elected oficials is madness and an enormous waste of monies.

      80

  • #
    Manfred

    The absurd and utterly pointless management of unspecified ‘climate change’ continues in true Babylonian tradition. An illusion of climate action – reaction is maintained. The real goal, agenda driven redistribution.

    This ‘focused’ redistribution of wealth by Envirosocialism shows us that the gravy train continues, albeit with a number change but still on the same track, with the same destination, and presumably to the same timetable.

    Aptly named ‘Fast Start’ in the true Orwellian tradition of double speak, the UN appears desirous of projecting an image of progress and rapid growth. Little do the recipients realise that they will be trapped in the ‘Start’ phase, possibly forever, or at least until they divest themselves of this toxic Green largesse and embark on seizing their own destinies, best begun by presenting a single vertical finger to UN bureaucrats.

    I understand why Europe donated 25% of ‘Fast Start’, with the UK bizarrely appearing as the largest single country contributor – I wonder does the UK electorate know? However, why did Japan contributed the most (45%) to the UN Fast Start programme? Any ideas? What does this mean? What are the implications of such disparate largesse?

    For me, interesting as it is, the issue raises more questions than it answers.

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    • #

      One clue is that Japan provided it as 80% loans and 20% grants.
      See here and here for the breakdown for them and others.

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      • #
        Manfred

        Thank you Jo.
        Unfortunately both links came up with:
        “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”
        The document tree begins in both cases with ‘access denied’.

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  • #
    Angry

    FOREIGN AID USED TO PRODUCE GLOBAL WARMING PROPAGANDA BS !!

    AUSTRALIA’S foreign aid program will spend $600 million on climate change programs in Third World countries.
    Pacific, Caribbean and African countries will share millions of dollars to help tackle climate change while environmental advisers will be paid $200,000 or more to help some of the world’s poorest countries.
    Another $3 million will be spent developing five-star green energy ratings for fridges, airconditioners and other household appliances in the Pacific as AusAID searches for ways to spend its growing budget.
    Millions of dollars will be spent to retrofit houses in poor African communities, while $15 million will be pumped into helping villagers along the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.
    The Opposition last night called on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to immediately suspend the “wasteful spending” on climate change.
    The $600 million spend on climate change comes as the rapidly growing aid program – managed by AusAID – has reached a staggering $13.3 billion in managed contracts, according to documents published this week.
    More than 6000 separate contracts are being managed by AusAID, with 4000 contracts negotiated in just one year, 2010-11.
    Documents show about $3 million is being spent to “build a group of Pacific leaders” with a greater understanding of climate change, while $20 million will be spent to help East Timor better understand changing weather patterns.
    Senior government ministers keen to slow the large sums being channelled into foreign aid are likely to use Kevin Rudd’s demise as foreign affairs minister to argue for budget reductions.
    Coalition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop labelled the climate change spending “an outrageous abuse of Australian foreign aid”.
    “I call on the Prime Minister to immediately suspend this expenditure on programs that will have zero impact on global emissions,” she said.

    FOREIGN AID – THE BIG CLIMATE CHANGE SPEND

    $100m – Climate change deal with Indonesia including “online forest fire monitoring system” and teaching “sustainable and adaptable” farming techniques in schools

    $20m – Undertake climate change research through “Pacific Climate Change Science Program”

    $3m – Develop a group of Pacific “leaders” who can better understand climate change

    $3m – Help Pacific nations introduce five-star “green energy” ratings for fridges, air conditioners and lights.

    $2.3m – Help Caribbean establish “disaster management emergency” agency

    $232,000 – Fund an environmental management adviser in Fed States of Micronesia

    $194,000 – Provide training materials and policy briefs for Indonesian Govt officials

    $182,000 – Conduct “greenhouse gas emission assessment” of Vietnam

    $36,000 – Develop a DVD titled “Climate Change in the Pacific”

    $15,000 – Aust booth at Climate Change Education Expo in Indonesia

    SOURCE: AusAID, Comm Govt

    Read more on the Herald Sun.

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/m-climate-bonanza/story-fn7x8me2-1226286682692

    SHAME SHAME SHAME !!

    ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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    • #
      gai

      And just WHO are the contractors and what are their connections to the politicians?

      That is always the fun question and the one that REAL Journalists should be running down and reporting on. But don’t hold your breath.

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    • #
      Mattb

      “Coalition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop labelled the climate change spending “an outrageous abuse of Australian foreign aid”.
      “I call on the Prime Minister to immediately suspend this expenditure on programs that will have zero impact on global emissions,” she said.”

      So Angry, surely you would be supportive of spending money on things that have zero impact on global emissions… since emissions are not a problem? The big ticket items there… forest fire management in Indonesia… and improving farming in indonesia… well they sound pretty reasonable to me.

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      • #
        Backslider

        I’m sure that we can find something that sounds useful in any of this, however what else is money being spent on Matt?

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      • #
        Backslider

        How was the skiing?

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      • #
        Dave

        MattyB

        The big ticket items there… forest fire management in Indonesia… and improving farming in indonesia… well they sound pretty reasonable to me.

        Indonesia love fools like you:
        1. Fire management – cut a few fire breaks, they cleared 50 million hectares for palm oil & logging. 50% of all forests.
        2. Farming – Indonesia is the worlds largest producer of palm oil.
        3. Australia spent over $500 million in AusAid to Indonesia
        4. Indonesia spent $8.4 billion on the armed forces in 2013.

        Yes MattyB they may sound reasonable to a nutcase. But the figures above cannot be understood by a pseudo GREEN.
        A true environmental person would be concerned about critically endangered species such as the orangutan and Sumatran tiger and increased greenhouse gas emissions. But you’re blind to the truth MattyB.

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      • #
        Angry

        NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        Enough of this global warming SCAM !!!!!!!!!!

        20

    • #
      Dennis

      With due consideration for the fraud scandals being investigated that are union movement and their ALP related I wonder how many hollow logs have been filled with foreign aid monies?

      50

  • #
    Ace

    The Chinese know how to deal with these things when they catch their own at it. Two words: Firing squads.

    90

  • #
    Backslider

    Thirty nine billion dollars!!!!

    Wouldn’t it be interesting to follow the money trail and see where it all actually ends up.

    Certainly the bulk would not be spent on anything that in any way benefits the people of the countries its supposedly going to. Nope. Most will go as consultation fees to friends, family and cronies of those who are dishing out the dollars…. Oh!! Gimme a contract!!

    110

  • #
    Neville

    Good post Jo just more billions wasted down the plug hole and zero change to the climate and temp.

    I think this quote from Spencer/ Christy should be prominent in any assessment of the climate debate since 1979.

    “It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the coming years. I frankly don’t see how the IPCC can keep claiming that the models are “not inconsistent with” the observations. Any sane person can see otherwise.

    If the observations in the above graph were on the UPPER (warm) side of the models, do you really believe the modelers would not be falling all over themselves to see how much additional surface warming they could get their models to produce?”

    What an insane farce and mitigation fraud we have had to endure for the last 34 years. How much longer before the MSM and govts all over the world start to wake up?
    Here’s their latest graph with spaghetti added. Linear trend was shown in their previous post.

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/#comments

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  • #
    Andrew

    Hang on, weren’t we told that AUS is by far the worst offender, and therefore needs to be punished with the World’s Biggest Carbon Tax?

    Turns out we’re right on the curve, and bang-on Canadia. But the Canadians are doing the exact opposite – withdrawing from Kyoto! We’re even more stupid than I thought.

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    • #
      Dennis

      News this week that CO2 estimates were not accurate and have been revised downwards. Sorry I do not have a link. Must have worked out by the budget deficit accountants.

      20

  • #
    theRealUniverse

    BILDERBURG THIS WEEK {Watford UK} (illegal secret meeting between world politicians and BANKERS etc,.) Means more environments scams planned as their AGW falls apart due to natural causes, sounds like a giant heart attack.
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/week-in-review-bilderberg-secrecy-and-the-surveillance-state/5338176

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/bilderberg-2013-hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-david-rockefeller-and-henry-kissenger-in-attendance/5338033
    These people break the Logan Act (US). It is illegal for ANY US politician to meet in secret with any foreign power..YET here they meet in secret unaccountable and illegal.
    Thanks to the alternative media for breaking this event open.

    80

  • #
    handjive

    And, for all these hundreds of BILLION$ spent, where are the key performance indicators?
    What should be considered the result, or outcome?

    To “tackle” climate change, extreme or otherwise? Stop a ONE in 500 year flood?
    .
    The best solution for climate change is a carbon (sic) tax By Ralph Nader JANUARY 4, 2013
    “We are already feeling the impacts of a warming planet.
    In 2011 the Mississippi River experienced yet another “500-year flood.”
    .
    So, let’s look at Europe, the home of the “first carbon (sic) tax.”
    ~ Finland introduced the world’s first carbon tax in 1990
    ~ The Netherlands introduced a carbon tax in 1990
    ~ In 1991, Sweden enacted a tax on the use of coal, oil, natural gas, petrol and aviation fuel used in domestic travel.
    ~ In 1991, Norway introduced a tax on carbon
    ~ Since 2002, Denmark has had a carbon tax
    ~ A carbon incentive tax was introduced in Switzerland in 2008.
    ~ In 1993, the UK government introduced a tax on retail petroleum products.
    ~ Ireland: A tax on oil and gas came into effect in 2010
    ~ The European Union emissions trading scheme began in 2005 and now covers the 27 countries of the European Union, and three non-European Union members.
    * Factbox: Carbon taxes around the world

    23 years later …
    HeadlineJune 6, 2013, Germany:
    The Danube has reached highest level in 500 years after days of rain.
    .
    Isn’t obvious a carbon (sic) tax does NOT control the climate or stop 500 year floods?
    The carbon tax is fraud.

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  • #
    Tim

    If 3rd world countries build their economies on a coal and oil based infrastructure, they might just grow and develop to create a threat to the big guys. We can’t have that. Keep them in their place with wind and solar and they’ll happily continue with basket weaving.

    110

    • #
      Rick Bradford

      Exactly. Keep the Green jackboot on their necks and maintain an air of moral superiority.

      I wonder how many lives could have been saved if the $39bn had been spent on stuff like clean drinking water, malaria and dengue prevention, boring stuff like that…

      110

      • #
        Greebo

        malaria and dengue prevention, boring stuff like that…

        The green movements have already made a major contribution to boring stuff, with their worldwide ‘ban’ on DDT.

        90

  • #
    Anna Keppa

    Anyone notice that when the UN and other international groups want to blame the US for something, they conveniently divide up Europe into countries, instead of treating them collectively as the European Union?

    Thus 330 million Americans’ “Purchasing Power Parity” swamps the collective PPP of 350 million Europeans.

    Snork.

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    Good to see New Zealand right up there, ahead of Iceland and Liechtenstein, and only just behind Switzerland.

    These are reckoned to be the most rational countries in the world, an this evidence confirms that. 🙂

    90

  • #

    Mind you, people reduced to beggary and desperation, as in this year’s North Indian Cold Wave, make lots of CO2 (and other, far less desirable gases) from burning dung and biomass. It’s just not taxable CO2, so our Green Betters can pretend it never existed.

    Our Green Betters. They pretend a lot of stuff, don’t they?

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    • #
      Backslider

      Oh no! That’s perfectly OK since it’s “biofuel”. They are ahead of all of us!

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      • #
        Tel

        The argument is that biomass generally breaks down one way or another. Either it rots, or someone burns it, or something eats it, etc. Thus, the CO2 outcome is constant regardless of usage. Every year a bunch of fresh biomass pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere in Summer, and every year that lot breaks down in Winter and dumps a bunch of CO2 back into the atmosphere. It’s a wash.

        However, if total forest mass is getting larger, then for a while it’s not a wash because the Carbon is “locked up” in the forest for some time (not forever). Same thing for timber going into houses, furniture, and for leather goods, etc.

        I think there’s some evidence that coral reefs are gradually trending to larger mass, and they contain a lot of Carbon.

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  • #
    Neville

    Here’s more of the mitigation fraud relating to a precipitation rich country and silly religious fundamentalists.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/07/is-fighting-global-warming-the-solution-to-water-shortages-in-malawi-or-elsewhere/#more-87789

    Zip change in rainfall since 1900 but these stupid fools still want to propose a mediation fix that won’t change a thing, but will waste valuable time and money.

    50

  • #
    Angry

    Good story on Bolt today.

    Britons would pray for global warming…………

    It’s supposed to be global warming, but how often do warming alarmist seize on local weather to spread their fear? Two can play that game:

    Britain has endured the coldest spring for more than 50 years (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/30/met-office_coldest-spring-for-50-years_n_3358469.html) with the mean temperature at a measly 6C, the Met Office has confirmed.

    more:-

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/britons_would_pray_for_global_warming/

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    • #
      Backslider

      That’s known as “The Irascible Spring”. Clearly due to Global Warming Climate Change…… Gaia is not happy at all.

      60

  • #
    handjive

    (FILM CLIP) Award-Winning Documentary – “BLACKOUT:

    Guinean schoolchildren in the capital Conakry who, lacking electricity in their homes, seek out lighted areas at night to study – airport, petrol stations, roundabouts.
    .
    “After five or six generations we no longer have any idea in the West what it is like to live without electricity.
    Yet nearly a quarter of the population of the world still lacks it.
    No lights, no radio and TV, no washing machines, no refrigerators, no hospitals, no way to store vaccines.

    And yet we are told we’d be doing the world a favour by making power more expensive so it would stay out of their reach???”

    A great contrast to Australia where children are “GreenWashed” to accept the turning off of their lights during Earth Hour.

    (via the excellent ‘Errors in IPCC Climate Science’ – Warwick Hughes)

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    • #
      inedible hyperbowl

      I went to primary school with a lot of kids who did not have electricity in their homes. Kerosene lamps to read by. No TV, no radio. The effect on these kids was that they did more reading than those of us who had radio.

      60

    • #

      While you may think this really does not relate to the main topic, it is in fact directly related to the topic.

      handjive makes a truly startling point here, one I have been attempting to explain for five years now, but warmists have no concept of the point I am trying to make here.

      When I first started writing about all this back in March of 2008, I tried to explain how we in the already Developed World take electrical power so much for granted, and now how we are the ones now saying we need to cut back on CO2 emissions for the sake of the, well, the World really. It’s a typical case now of we have something, and, umm, because of Global Warming/Climate Change, you guys in the Developing World cannot have what we already have, access to electrical power at a regular and constant basis, and the only real way of doing this is with coal fired power.

      So, to that end I attempted to paint a picture by comparison.

      I used the Country of Malawi in Central Africa, a truly desperate Country.

      Their population is relatively close to that of Australia, well, 17 Million anyway, and that’s 17 Million.

      The area of that Country is around 55% of the area of Victoria.

      So, while every industry, every workplace, every high rise, every hospital, all the train services, every shop, every residence, well everything really, in Victoria has access to a reliable and constant supply of electrical power, what do they have in Malawi?

      The TOTAL nameplate Capacity for every power plant in Malawi comes in at a tad over 300MW.

      No, that’s not a misprint. That’s Three Hundred MegaWatts, all of it run of river hydro.

      The largest Power Station in Victoria is the Loy Yang Station, (A and B) which has a Nameplate Capacity of 3300MW, and it supplies around 17% of the power for all of Victoria.

      So, for Malawi, they have access to around 9% of what is the output from this ONE plant for a population almost that of the whole of Australia.

      The criminal iniquity of all this is that the UN, a body ostensibly set up to look after these Countries spend hundreds of millions of dollars to form committees to tell these people that they can’t have something that WE already do have.

      It seems that the whole aim here is twofold, the first to keep these people in the most abject poverty without the chance to claw a tiny bit out of that, and the second aim is to have us in the already Developed World go back and join them there.

      It’s not just Malawi, it’s most of Africa, nearly all of India, and most of China, and luckily China is finding their way out of this.

      These warmist sympathisers need to have a long hard look in the mirror. They don’t care about this, and why? Because they don’t know, and couldn’t care to find out, and then they scoff at me as a so called ‘vandal’, seeking to destroy the Planet because I support coal fired power, the cheapest and most efficient way to actually bring electrical power to places like this.

      It makes me sick. Their pious attitude from their perceived green moral high ground is vomitous in the extreme.

      Tell them this, and they change the subject, because they just do not want to hear.

      Tony.

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      • #
        janama

        Tony – another example is Tibet – we hear all these stories about the oppression from the Chinese yet for the Nomadic Tibetan the chinese have provided petrol generators or solar panels and given them power to have lights and TV in their Yurts.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        … the UN, a body ostensibly set up to look after these Countries …

        The UN was initially setup, following the Second World War, with a mandate to provide a forum where all countries could air their grievances, thereby avoiding further (possibly Nuclear) conflict.

        Some of those grievances were related to the fact that the industrialised nations were extracting minerals and other resources from the non-industrial nations, and giving nothing in return. So a policy was developed for the industrial nations to pay monies to the UN so that the UN could supply aid (pay compensation) to the Governments of the non-industrial nations, who would then use that money to pay for improved services for their citizens.

        There are two problems, that stand out with this.

        Firstly, the UN has had to grow its own bureaucracy, in order to assess, manage, coordinate, review, audit, and report on the various aid programs.

        Secondly, the aid money, when it gets in-country, tends to evaporate somewhat, and in some countries it evaporates completely in purchasing weaponry to ensure that the “legitimate” government does not get overthrown, whist it is in the process of planning and assessing how they might improve services to their citizens.

        Of course the process of purchasing military ordinance, and the strategic planning required to keep the citizens “informed” of the measures being planned for their welfare, requires its own bureaucracy that is generally formed from the relatives of those in the “legitimate” government. Naturally, the costs of this bureaucracy must be met from the aid money supplied by the UN.

        To avoid these problems, the UN tries to recruit people who are familiar with politics at the country level. Of course the UN will be more familiar with the capabilities of senior politicians who have had considerable interaction with the UN, and understand how the UN functions. These senior politicians also tend to be those who have proved to be generous in the donations they have made to the UN in the past, because of their conviction regarding what the UN is trying to achieve.

        Sometimes, politicians at the country level, come up with new ideas regarding how revenue generation could be increased on order to better fund the UN in support of its aid programmes to the non-industrialised nations. Such initiatives are the mark of the true states-person, in the eyes of the UN, and other world leaders. Australia is indeed the lucky country to be lead by such a person.

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  • #
    Drapetomania

    Cricket noises from the CO2 cheer leading team here…too busy..??
    Not even the integrity to amit this money “to save the planet” did nothing.????
    The $CAGW$ supporters said nothing when the $CAGW$ science mistakes/frauds/tricks and games have been exposed..
    And nothing again now..

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      No. It is Saturday, and very few trolls work at the Weekend.

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      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Not even the dead agrostologist.
        I can’t help but wonder, are all astrologits agro, or just the dead ones?

        40

  • #
    Katio1505

    Re Angry’s listing of ‘aid’ projects:

    I wonder what sort of a fee AusAid charges for administration. Probably a nice little earner for the organization.

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  • #
    Eddy Aruda

    There are a lot of generous people in this world give in an attempt to help the less fortunate. With but few exceptions, most of the money given to “help others” is usually squandered on overhead. Climate Aid is not only a waste of money and a misallocation of funds but is a way for the bureaucrats to rape the taxpayers wallets.

    Global warming hysteria is but a symptom of a dangerous disease: militant environmentalism.

    They see humans as the disease and the far left as the cure. They want to reduce the global population to 1 billion. They are including themselves in that billion and anyone else that they deem worthy to join the elect.

    They are quite comfortable with human sacrifice to appease Gaia. That is why they wage war on globalization. For these misanthropes the more people in the third world that die a horrible death is a step in the right direction and a victory for the environment. They have no qualms denying over a billion people the things we in the West take for granted: electricity, running water, sanitation, medical and dental care, roads, cars, etc.

    I would love to see all the green ecofacists forced to trade places with a citizen of Sub Saharan Africa. I would take great satisfaction at seeing climate scientists choking on the smoke created when they burn hockey sticks to cook their food in a poorly ventilated mud hut. I would feel joy watching members of greenpeace taken from the boats they use to protest the oil they cannot live without and put on the side of a crocodile infested lake where they had to compete with wild beasts as they fished with a spear to fill their empty stomachs. At night as they came home they could behold the looks on their starving families faces and try to comfort them with a false hope of a brighter future.

    After a year or two of living hand to mouth and constantly losing ground in their battle for survival I am sure they would sing a different tune. Then again?

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      Speedy

      Eddy

      With greenies, as with most authoritarian types, the problem lies in the difference between theory and practice, between saying and doing, between intentions and outcomes.

      Don’t listen to what they say – look at what they do.

      Cheers,

      Speedy

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        Joe V.

        Indeed, sitting around sipping Latte’s while solving other peoples problems, with yet other peoples money , has a curious detachment from reality .

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      Angry

      A bit of an insight into the minds of these eco TERRORISTS that hate humans here.

      Are Humans Parasites?

      http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2010/09/07/are-humans-parasites/

      They are truly dangerous and mentally unbalanced !

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      Gordon of 2902

      I read Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Eerily prophetic.

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    Earl

    The other day, I heard a very apt description of a Green.
    A Green is a person who lays awake at night, filled with fear, dread and angst, that out there, some where, there is some-one who is happy.
    For those of us able to remember the term, I truly believe that the Greens are the new Wowsers.
    About every hundred years they turn up, the Malthusians, the Wowsers, and now the Greens.

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    cohenite

    It is truly a schizophrenic issue, AGW; we have Jo’s sensible analysis and then this by that sanctimonious journalist at fairfax, Hartcher.

    Cook’s recent abominination about concensus is used by Harcher to prove that Kiribati is going under water and since Rob Oakeshott’s challenge to everyone to debate AGW went unnoticed AGW must be true.

    The true situation at Kiribati.

    It’s a Bizarro world.

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    Yonniestone

    Forget casino’s!
    This is by far the best way to launder money.
    You don’t even use your own, just demand it.
    No unwanted attention for dealing with crime, you own them.
    And the world see’s you as doing a good and noble thing.
    Kind of like a dictatorship I suppose.

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    janama

    O/T – looks like GBR is recovering from Yasi faster than predicted.

    The coral reefs on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef were devastated by Cyclone Yasi – a Category 5 Hurricane which made landfall in Queensland, Australia, on February 3, 2011.

    A new study from the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) shows that large numbers of coral larvae replenished the reefs within nine months of the cyclone. The findings, published in PLoS ONE, provide fresh hope for the ability of the world’s coral reefs to recover from destructive storms

    http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112868059/coral-reef-damaged-by-cyclone-yasi-shows-promise-060713/

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    $27 billion wasted that should have lightened the total sum of human misery, By the walls of Babylon, I knelt and wept …

    What happened was the end result of good intentions and ignorant policies, supposed to help out the most needy human beings. It was an incident, a moment, a misjudgment, a fading memory, something long forgotten, and it actually doesn’t matter any more. It now means nothing. They’re all gone. Pretty much, everyone involved is dead, and not long after it all occurred. A bag of rice can only keep a person alive for so long. Mostly, they all sit now with God in paradise, like that nice but cruel song says.

    http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/they-sit-with-god-in-paradise/

    Pointman

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      Joe V.

      The road to the next Climate Conference, as they say, is paved with good intentions.
      (Is there going to be another one – after Lord Monckton’s revelation to the assembled at Doha last year ?)

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        MemoryVault

        .
        The next (19th) UN COP (Conference of the Parties) is in Warsaw, Poland, from 11 to 22 November, 2013.

        .
        It will be interesting to see if the Gore Effect plays a part again, given that it is fully two weeks earlier than COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, (December 7 – 18), which was marked by a record (for that time of the year) blizzard.

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    External aid provided through government channels is often ineffective. It’s more productive and valued by the recipients if they can do it themselves, instead of being hog-tied to grants, etc.

    e.g. Spontaneously-created (private) schools in “poor” areas have better reach and effect than government schools. Aid to governments to provide “free” education is a blunt instrument.

    Take a look.

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      Tel

      External aid provided through government channels is often ineffective. It’s more productive and valued by the recipients if they can do it themselves, instead of being hog-tied to grants, etc.

      That very often is the case with anything supplied through government channels. Not universally true, but often.

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        What struck me in that (linked) report was the high incidence of absenteeism in government schools; by the teachers. Teachers who were paid a lot more than those of the spontaneously-erupting private schools.

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          Mark D.

          One needs time to spend all that wage right? A good friend of mine is a Catholic elementary school principal. She and her teachers regularly do a better job for far less monies than the public schools do. Mind you these aren’t kids from well-to-do families either.

          What Tel has noted I find true too. Money is often NOT what is needed.

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    inedible hyperbowl

    OT. Jo, I think its time you posted something about the process of adjusting LNP views of AGW (post election).
    WA has will have at least two MPs who are anti-AGW.
    Your thoughts please Jo.

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      janama

      I think the LNP are handling it correctly. When you are relying on a massive swing from the left to swing you into power you would be mad to challenge the basis of left leanings and are better off letting it go through to the keeper as we say.

      Abbott has rightfully appointed the dingbat Greg Hunt to handle the questions – he’s not about to upset the lefties even though he’s thoroughly frustrating to you and I.

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    gai

    Slightly off-topic but still on the subject of money, poverty, lies and the elite:

    IMF: Convergence, Interdependence, and Divergence

    Since roughly 1990 the pace of per capita income growth in emerging and developing economies has accelerated in a sustainable manner and is substantially above that in advanced economies….

    In many countries the distribution of income has become more unequal, and the top earners’ share of income in particular has risen dramatically. In the United States the share of the top 1 percent has close to tripled over the past three decades, now accounting for about 20 percent of total U.S. income (Alvaredo and others, 2012). At the same time, while the new convergence mentioned above has reduced the distance between advanced and developing economies when they are taken as two aggregates, there are still millions of people in some of the poorest countries whose incomes have remained almost stagnant for more than a century… These two facts have resulted in increased divergence between the richest people in the world and the very poorest, despite the broad convergence of average incomes….

    Another words the rich are getting richer but the middle class is more closely approaching the income of the poor.

    Huff & Puff: U.S. Median Annual Wage Falls To $26,364 As Pessimism Reaches 10-Year High

    The Uncomfortable Truth About American Wages

    ….This finding of stagnant wages is unsettling, but also quite misleading. For one thing, this statistic includes only men who have jobs. In 1970, 94 percent of prime-age men worked, but by 2010, that number was only 81 percent. The decline in employment has been accompanied by increases in incarceration rates, higher rates of enrollment in the Social Security Disability Insurance program and more Americans struggling to find work. Because those without jobs are excluded from conventional analyses of Americans’ earnings, the statistics we most commonly see — those that illustrate a trend of wage stagnation — present an overly optimistic picture of the middle class.

    When we consider all working-age men, including those who are not working, the real earnings of the median male have actually declined by 19 percent since 1970… Men with less education face an even bleaker picture; earnings for the median man with a high school diploma and no further schooling fell by 41 percent from 1970 to 2010….

    In the face of this type of data the idiots at Forbes are saying: Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Best President?

    Try to mention that the stock market reflects investments in China and India and not the USA economy or try to bring up ShadowStatistics actual unemployment rate of ~23% and you get your comment wiped.

    I used the USA since the MSM is busy trying to tell Americans our economy is ‘Recovering’ and we do not have a Carbon Tax yet….

    The EU and Australia are even worse off.

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      Dennis

      It is worth considering a recent Australian Financial Review article that published a comparison of the cost of employing skilled people. That is the total cost not just wage. In Australia it is over $600/day, in the US $400/day and third world under $200/day. As manufacturing industry, and even clerical positions, are transferred to lower cost countries obviously the middle class in first world countries must shrink and the lower level will increase in numbers. There is no quick fix. The global economy is undergoing massive changes much like the earlier times when Age of Agriculture ended and was replaced by the Industrial Age. Since the late 1990s we have been in the new Information Technology Age and the changes are having a much greater impact, particularly in the developed countries.

      Adding to the confusion and problems has been the global warming/climate change adverse impact and socialist left political agenda, the EU maybe the most damaging example.

      It’s a challenge for younger people and they really do need to research areas such as UN Agenda 21 to understand what has been taking place, and by stealth and/or lies and deception.

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    RB

    That’s a fascinating diagram, Jo, thanks for that.

    It put in perspective for me that our emissions (UK) and yours are pretty miniscule overall. How much has the UK and Aus spent, I wonder?

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    crosspatch

    leaving the world’s most vulnerable countries lacking the money badly needed to cope with the impacts of climate change they are already experiencing.

    Would it be too much to ask them to produce enumeration of exactly what “impacts” of “climate change” they are “experiencing” and to show exactly how that was caused by humans and how giving them money fixes it? I mean an exact accounting. I want to see something that says “we saw this impact that was due to a change in climate that is directly attributable to human activity and we are going to use this money to make this change”. In other words, I want to see them go through the mental exercise of seeing how futile it is to attempt to change global climate with a pocket full of money and to admit it is just about getting the cash.

    If you’ll excuse me, the Prime Minister needs a sandwich.

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      Tel

      To illustrate his point, Fraser used this graph below, showing that even on the day of record temperatures in NSW on January 18 – Sydney reached 46C – the state still had a massive amount of excess capacity, and the wholesale price barely broke above $150/MWh. Baseload generators are often described as low cost, but they rely on midday peaks which can push the prices as high as $10,000/MWh to boost their profits. Around one quarter of generator revenues are sourced from 40 hours of such peaks a year.

      If those big heavy-lifting generators move to private hands, there will be more profit on the peaks because the private operators will run them at a generation capacity that optimizes the profits (i.e. less than they run now). Then we will have pissing and moaning about people doing that.

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    Dennis

    What are the now enlightened people of the world going to do about the parasites on the left side of politics and the new world order agenda they have been allowed to pursue to this point in time when the lies and deception are being revealed? Extreme greenism and fellow travellers on the left, The Fabians, and others must be held to account for what they have done.

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      gai

      Since the parasites are on the RIGHT as well as the LEFT there is nothing we can do.

      The “right side” of politics is about Corporatism and the control of government by the international corporations and banksters. The “Left side” of politics is controlled pretty much by the Fabians/London School of Economics who educate the top tier of politicians, banksters and corporate officers. link You can see the list at WIKI and WIKI (The london School of Economics was started by the founders of the Fabian Society)

      The “Right” is actually the ‘Controlled Opposition’ as are all the NGOs. For example Organic Consumers Assoc. is funded by the Rockefeller foundations and the Rockefellers want WTO to control US farming so the fight against the bill HR-875 was sabotaged by the NGO that should have been leading the fight. Maude Barlow a “no dog in this fight” Canadian, is a director of both Organic Consumers Assoc and Food and Water Watch both of whom supported the bill. She has been handsomely rewarded for selling the US consumer out with an appointment as New Senior Advisor to the UN president on October 21, 2008.

      It gets very confusing because the labels used keep on swapping meanings and as Dr. Evans pointed out so nicely it has always been about The political class vs the serfs. They really do not give a hoot what they call themselves as long as the people buy the propaganda and they advance the agenda. The Fabian shield makes that pretty clear.

      Look at the Board of directors of Fox News: link

      You have Viet Dinh

      Viet D. Dinh (Vietnamese: Đinh Đồng Phụng Việt; born February 22, 1968) is a lawyer and a conservative legal scholar[1] who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Born in Saigon,[2] in the former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT ActWIKI

      And the ever present Bankster link.
      Sir Roderick I. Eddington
      Non-Executive Chairman,
      Australia and New Zealand
      J.P. Morgan
      he was the Rhodes Scholar, like Clinton (Rhodes is connected to the Fabians)

      UK Fabian former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the JP Morgan connection link

      Joel Klein
      Executive Vice President
      News Corporation
      Chief Executive Officer

      In 1975, Klein joined the legal team of the Washington, D.C. non-profit Mental Health Law Project. The MHLP was an independent non-profit organization that brought class-action suits to establish rights for mentally and developmentally disabled clients.** In that capacity, Klein developed a specialty in health care and constitutional matters.[1] After working there for a year, he went into private practice, working for five years before founding his own law firm with several partners. In the 1990s Klein served in the White House Counsel’s office under President Bill Clinton before being appointed to the United States Department of Justice. There he served as United States Assistant Attorney General… Klein was rumored to be one of Barack Obama’s candidates for Secretary of Education.[3]… WIKI

      ** A very long story but the USA shut down the state mental institutions and turned the mentally ill over to ‘half-way houses’ that were in turn shut down. The result has been a glut in our prison system graph (The socialists NEEDED street people/the poor to point to so county homes for vagrants and state mental institutions were shut down.)

      If you bother to look the connections are there

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    Valentin

    Well, taking a closer look at the “CO2 Emissions & Wealth”, one can see that both axis’ measurement units are wrong. UN experts???
    No, 10x

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