Pirate's Cove

First World countries have made huge pledges to give “developing nations”, which never seem to actually develop, huge sums of money. How’s that working out?

(Washington Post) So it’s worth asking: What does this climate aid actually look like? Where has it all gone so far? And are wealthy nations really going to put up $100 billion per year in climate finance in the years to come? Here’s a breakdown:

–2010-2012: The first $35 billion in climate aid. Between 2010 and 2012, the world’s wealthy nations say they provided $35 billion to help poorer countries adjust to climate change, as promised at Copenhagen. (You can see a full breakdown of these pledges from the World Resources Institute here.)

The vast majority of that aid — $27 billion — came from five countries: Germany, Japan, Norway, Britain, and the United States. And most of it went toward clean energy, efficiency, and other mitigation projects around the world. Only a small slice, about $5 billion, went toward helping poor countries prepare for the actual impacts of climate change, like droughts or heat waves.

For instance, Norway gave Brazil $1 billion to help prevent deforestation. The United States gave the Congo Basin $15.7 million to preserve rain forest biodiversity. Japan gave Egypt a $338 million loan for wind power. You can see a partial list of projects in this map below from 2011..

Essentially, it looks like the money was being used for some real environmental issues. Some of the money was in terms of “loans”, rather than grants. Most was simply repackaged aid that would have occurred anyway. And we really do not know if the money is being used properly as it was intended. Nor does the money usually help people who are supposed to be affected by Hotcoldwetdry directly.

Oh, and of course this had to crop up

–Climate inequality and the U.N. talks. That brings us to this year’s U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, where the unequal impacts of climate change have been a major theme — particularly after the devastation wrought by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines underscored the difficulty that poorer nations will have in adjusting to weather disasters that could become more likely as the world warms.

Warmists can’t help themselves.