Climate Witness to Congress: Paris Climate Talks Are About 'Cash' and 'Political Capital'

Brittany M. Hughes | November 18, 2015
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Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc., testified before the Senate Committee on the Environment Wednesday regarding climate talks currently underway in Paris this week, where President Obama and other world leaders are desperately trying to convince developing nations to abandon easy energy sources like coal (a known poverty-lifter) to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

And according to Cass, the whole Paris climate negotiation circus all about saving Obama’s political legacy while underdeveloped countries go green. In American dollars, that is.

Despite all the scientific jargon usually thrown around when talking about the world's biggest bogeyman climate change, the bottom-line issue really isn’t rocket science. Countries like China and India, which are looking to rapidly boost their own economies and eradicate poverty within their own borders, depend on reliable energy standards like coal, a relatively cheap and easy fuel source known for powering cities and creating whole slews of jobs.

While the United States continues to shoot itself in the economic foot by waging a war against its own coal plants and burying mines across West Virginia and Kentucky under mounds of burdensome EPA regulations, India is opening its own army of coal plants faster than you can say “fistful of rupees.”

All while asking President Obama – and the American taxpayer – to foot the bill for their past environmental suffering. And you can bet we’ll end up writing the check.

From to Cass’ testimony Tuesday:

The Paris negotiations are not about emissions reductions. They are about cash. The developing world expects developed countries to offer more than $100 billion per year in what is called climate finance. The rationale for the money, the source of the money and the use of the money are all unclear. Developing nations believe they are owed an “ecological debt” for past developed world emissions, and also owed “reparations” for damage from storms they link to climate change.

These are plainly non-starters for the United States. But the developing world is also asking to be reimbursed the cost of mitigation measures they take. India alone says in its INDC [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions] it needs $2.5 trillion between now and 2030. But if the INDCs represent business as usual, funding is clearly inappropriate

Realistically, developed world leaders are pursuing a transaction in which, having staked their political capital and their legacies on achieving an agreement, any agreement, they will now pay developing nations to sign on the dotted line. We should worry that U.S. negotiators and their colleagues, desperate to produce an agreement, will commit dollars from taxpayers that they cannot actually deliver, and get nothing in return.

 

President Obama has already pledged $3 billion in American tax dollars to the Green Climate Fund, a $100 billion global initiative to help developing nations deal with the impact of addressing climate change. 

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