“Follow the money!” The old maxim is always sound advice when assessing the motives of those advancing bold agendas for the benefit of mankind. Invariably, the newest progressive idea entails a transfer of wealth from the taxpaying classes of Western nations to our transnational, global, and Third World elites.
For the masters of the universe, establishing justice and equality for the world’s poor are rewarding exercises in every sense of the word.
Consider the 2015 Paris climate accords. Its declared goal: Save the planet from the ravages of climate change, which is caused by carbon dioxide emissions, which are produced by industrial nations with too many of the world’s factories, farms, ships, planes, and autos. Under the Paris accords, wealthier nations of the West were to set and meet strict national targets for reducing their carbon emissions. Together, these reductions were to prevent any rise in the planet’s temperature of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This was presented as the world’s last best hope of preventing a climate catastrophe in this century.
Among the warnings the climate has been sending us: The melting of polar ice caps, killer hurricanes, droughts, wildfires such as we had this year in California, river floods in Europe, rising sea levels, and the swamping of coastal towns, cities, and islands like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
With the apocalypse thus laid out if we failed to act, there arose the inevitable question: How much hard cash would the global elites and their Third World clients be needing from the West—to grant the West an absolution for its past sins of carbon emissions? Answer: The rich nations would fork over $100 billion yearly to repair damage done by climate change to the poorer nations and to compensate them for reorienting their energy dependence away from coal, oil, and gas, to greener forms like sun, wind, and water.
But in 2016, an inconceivable event aborted the Paris climate scheme. The Americans elected Donald Trump. Calling the Paris deal a rip-off of his country, Trump swiftly pulled the U.S. out of the accords. Upon what grounds? Put simply, America First. Under the Paris accords, the U.S. was to cut back carbon emissions annually and contribute the lion’s share of the $100 billion annual wealth transfer for the developing world.
Meanwhile, China, the world’s number one polluter, if carbon dioxide is a pollutant, was to be permitted to increase its carbon emissions until 2030. Thus, today, China is responsible for 28 percent of world carbon emissions, while the U.S. contribution is half of that, and falling.
Came then President Joe Biden, who immediately reentered the Paris deal. In April, he pledged to pony up $5.7 billion as a payment on our share of the $100 billion. At the U.N. last week, he pledged to double that contribution to $11.4 billion. Congress has yet to appropriate either sum.
China’s game? Beijing is suggesting that it wants to stay cooperative. “China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad,” pledged Chinese President Xi Jinping in prerecorded remarks to the U.N. General Assembly. Yet, as the New York Times writes, in 2020, China “built more than three times more new coal power capacity than all other countries in the world combined, equal to ‘more than one large coal plant per week.'”
Yet there are trade-offs here. Those Chinese coal-fired plants in poorer nations do contribute to global carbon emissions. But such coal plants also enable the peoples of Asia and Africa to enjoy the benefit such plants produce—electricity, heat, light. These can make life far better for 21st-century Asians and Africans, just as coal and oil made life better for 19th- and 20th-century Americans.
In Glasgow from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, the U.K.’s Boris Johnson will host the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26. There, new demands will be made on the Americans, both for more money and new reductions in carbon emissions.
A paradigm, a pattern, has been long set. Brand the U.S. as history’s great producer of carbon dioxide. Depict the Second and Third Worlds as victims of American self-indulgence. And get on with the shakedown. Demand more money. Castigate the Americans by calling Biden’s $11.4 billion a pittance, not enough.
One wonders: Among the climate elites, how many will be traveling to Glasgow on commercial and private jets, and how many will be battling climate change by arriving by boat, bus, or bicycle? If this New World Order crowd wanted both to set an example and cut the carbon footprint, why not do a virtual summit?
As for the Chinese, we should probably be prepared for one of those “offers they can’t refuse”: “If you Americans want China’s cooperation on climate change, you might want to cut back your propaganda about the ‘Wuhan virus,’ Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Taiwan and those allegations of ‘genocide’ against the Uyghurs.”
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