The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attempting to do what couldn’t be done at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen last December: Transfer large sums of wealth from developed countries to developing ones in the name of climate change. From BusinessWeek:
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the organization is helping to set up a “green fund” that would raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries.
Strauss-Kahn indicated the fund may use its quotas, which reflect member countries’ financial capacity and obligations within the IMF, to raise initial funding. The IMF would not manage the money raised, he said. Last year, an increase in quotas allowed the institution to boost global liquidity by more than $250 billion at the request of the Group of 20 leaders.”
There are prudent ways to help developing countries protect against natural disasters but more foreign aid isn’t one of them. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman, who witnessed many of the developing countries’ pleas for handouts, lists several problems with foreign aid: “In many cases only a fraction of the funds were well spent, and aid can encourage the perpetuation of the very reasons (and regimes) that gave rise to the need for assistance in the first place. Foreign aid doled out to fight global warming has another big drawback – the problem it addresses is an overstated one.”
More economic freedom will allow developing countries to actually develop and build houses and buildings more resistant to natural disasters. Take the recent tragic setbacks in Haiti and Chile, for instance. In the 2010 Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, Chile ranks 10th and is categorized as “mostly free.” Haiti ranks in the “mostly unfree” category at 141st. Income per capita is much higher in Chile and its citizens can afford soundly-constructed infrastructure. Although the earthquake that hit Chilean land was stronger than that of Haiti’s, there was far less casualties and structural damage because “Chileans, on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.”
Instead of establishing green funds, we should be working to open up markets to help countries improve both their economy and their environment. “Engaging in freer trade is a fundamental part of a strategy to better promote the evolution of sensible environmental regulations by empowering countries with the economic opportunity to develop and raise living standards,” writes Senior Trade Policy Analyst Daniella Markheim.
We do have opportunities to help developing countries become more sustainable and economically prosperous. But they don’t involve the IMF and hundreds of billions of dollars annually in wealth transfers.
We’re a few days before a massive snowstorm whitewashes the District of Columbia, but the Climategate and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change storms are already here and as fierce as ever. Earlier this week, The Guardian shed a little more light on the flawed and hidden data from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit:
The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN’s embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair. It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.The revelations come at a torrid time for climate science, with the IPPC suffering heavy criticism for its use of information that had not been rigorously checked – in particular a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.”
The Environmental Protection agency heavily relied on the IPCC report to suggest there was a scientific consensus on global warming. The Himalayan glacier gaffe is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to flaws in the IPCC report. Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman expands,
Similar shenanigans appear to have gone on with the IPCC’s claim that damage from hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters has worsened because of global warming. Like the Himalayan glacier melt assertion, it was based on the claim of a single researcher who had not published it in the scientific literature, and who now disassociates himself from the way it was used in the IPCC report. Indeed, when he did publish the study, he concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” of a link between warming and natural disaster damage.”
Further, the IPCC’s assessment of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa came from two sources. One was from a magazine that discussed anecdotal evidence from mountain climbers and the other came from a student’s dissertation. The student was pursuing a master’s equivalent in geography and used interviews with mountain guides for his research.
Some are suggesting the Climategate storm is subsiding with the recent exoneration of Penn State University professor Michael Mann, one of the notorious climate researchers at CSU involved in the email threads. But the university’s internal investigation is being called into question by the Commonwealth Foundation who feels an independent investigation would provide more credibility. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has serious issues with Penn State’s initial report of the Mann investigation.
And Congressman Issa (R-CA) is leading a charge to freeze the $500,000 grant in stimulus money Mann received. Don’t worry, that money was put to good use. The grant has generated 1.62 jobs. The more pertinent question is: were those jobs saved or created?
We’re not sure what’s worse: The fact that some Members of Congress want to implement a cap and trade policy based on these reports that would result in $4.6 trillion in higher energy taxes, job losses exceeding 2.5 million and nearly $10 trillion lost in gross domestic product (GDP). Or, the reduction in carbon dioxide from a cap and trade bill (and the economic pain that comes with it) would not make a dent in the earth’s temperature. You can decide.