UN wants our money

But, we’re broke.

UN Chief Wants Action on $100 Billion Climate Fund, Posted on April 23, 2015 Written by cnsnews.com

More than five years after Pres­i­dent Obama and other lead­ers agreed on a 2020 goal of rais­ing $100 bil­lion each year from pub­lic and pri­vate sources to help devel­op­ing coun­tries deal with cli­mate change, the United Nations wants to see action.

Ahead of Earth Day on Wednes­day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is point­ing to a meet­ing next month in New York where he says he will be look­ing for clear indi­ca­tions from gov­ern­ments and investors as to how the ambi­tious goal will be reached.

“Cli­mate change is the defin­ing issue of our times,” he told a con­fer­ence hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance last week. “It is also an enor­mous eco­nomic opportunity.”

On Sat­ur­day Ban again tack­led the sub­ject, at an Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund event in Washington. “We need a cred­i­ble tra­jec­tory for real­iz­ing the $100 bil­lion goal per year by 2020, as well as the oper­a­tional­iza­tion of the Green Cli­mate Fund,” he said. “This was a com­mit­ment which was made in 2009 dur­ing the Copen­hagen cli­mate change sum­mit meet­ing. We have only mobi­lized $10 bil­lion as an ini­tial cap­i­tal­iza­tion of this Green Cli­mate Fund. I would really hope that there will be a tra­jec­tory, a path, which will be shown to the member-states.”

And at a pre-Earth Day con­cert on the National Mall in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., on Sat­ur­day night, Ban called on concert-goers to raise their voices in support. “I want to hear from you,” he told the crowd. “It’s our last chance to slow global warming.”

Launched in 2011 as a result of that 2009 deci­sion in Den­mark, the Green Cli­mate Fund (GCF) is designed to help devel­op­ing coun­tries curb “green­house gas” emis­sions and cope with occur­rences blamed on cli­mate change, such as ris­ing sea levels. The aim is to reach $100 bil­lion a year by 2020.

As of April 10, the fund had received pledges from 33 coun­tries, total­ing $10.2 bil­lion. That includes a $3 bil­lion pledge by Obama last Novem­ber, by far the largest con­tri­bu­tion promised to date. Some GOP law­mak­ers have sig­naled an inten­tion to push back.

The next big date on the inter­na­tional cli­mate cal­en­dar is a U.N. cli­mate mega-conference in Paris in Novem­ber that is meant to deliver a new global agreement. Ban and U.N. cli­mate offi­cials want clar­ity on the financ­ing issue, as a con­fi­dence booster ahead of the Paris gathering.

Sub­si­dies in the fir­ing line - Accord­ing to the World Bank, two key ways for gov­ern­ments to free up fund­ing to help achieve the $100 bil­lion tar­get is by “putting a price on car­bon” – through car­bon taxes or emis­sion trad­ing schemes – and phas­ing out fos­sil fuel subsidies.

“With a small per­cent­age of the money that saved by end­ing sub­si­dies or of the rev­enue raised from a car­bon tax or per­mit sale going to cli­mate finance, gov­ern­ments could help meet the $100 bil­lion cli­mate finance com­mit­ment and other mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion needs,” it said in a report Sat­ur­day on the IMF and World Bank spring meet­ings in Washington.

A coali­tion of eight coun­tries – Costa Rica, Den­mark, Ethiopia, Fin­land, New Zealand, Nor­way, Swe­den and Switzer­land – is tar­get­ing the sub­sidy issue in par­tic­u­lar. The coali­tion, call­ing itself “Friends of Fos­sil Fuel Sub­sidy Reform,” said on Fri­day gov­ern­ments spent more than $548 bil­lion on fos­sil fuel sub­si­dies in 2013.

The group noted point­edly that this was more than five times more than the $100 bil­lion tar­get for cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion by 2020. “The elim­i­na­tion of fos­sil fuel sub­si­dies would make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the goal of keep­ing aver­age tem­per­a­tures from ris­ing more than two degrees Cel­sius above pre-industrial lev­els,” the coali­tion added, refer­ring to the goal which world lead­ers sev­eral years ago decided was nec­es­sary to avoid what global warm­ing advo­cates say will be poten­tially cat­a­strophic effects on the planet.

Related Posts

• COP20: Ban Ki-moon hails del­e­gates for paving way to ‘mean­ing­ful’ cli­mate agreement
• A Global Tax? UN Debates Requir­ing Mem­bers to Report ‘GHG’ Emissions
• The tip of the cli­mate spend­ing iceberg
  Filed Under: Climate Change
  http://agenda21news.com/2015/04/un-chief-wants-action-on-100-billion-climate-fund/#more-5474
  Comments
  Congress needs to reverse Obama’s $3 billion pledge and declare global warming a hoax and carbon capture a scam. Congress has already refused to pass the carbon tax. Australia repealed their carbon tax. Other countries should follow and reject the carbon tax in response to this UN push. The US should quit the UN in response to their aggressive corruption.
  Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader