Written by James Heiser
Thursday, 10 September 2009 18:30
Thursday, 10 September 2009 18:30
Member states of the European Union may soon find that the joys of environmental self-righteousness quickly fade when the bill comes due. According to a report from BBCNews, the European Commission is proposing that the EU provide billions annually to poor countries for climate-change adaptation. Yet the amounts proposed are a relatively small part of what the United Nations says poor nations will need and are considered insufficient by environmental alarmists:
The UN estimates that poor nations will need about $100bn (£60bn) per year for climate adaptation, with much of that coming from levies on carbon trading.
The [European] commission hopes its proposal will stimulate negotiations leading up to December's UN summit in Copenhagen. Campaign groups say the sums are less than the EU ought to be spending.
"With less than 90 days before Copenhagen, we need to make serious progress in these negotiations," said commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.
"I am determined that Europe will continue to provide a lead, but developed and economically advanced developing countries must also make a contribution."
The commission is proposing that the EU’s “share” of the $100 billion would be somewhere between $2 and $15 billion. Given the usual natural expansion of all governmental programs, one can easily imagine how such a figure will be adjusted upward time and again in the coming years if the precedent of making such transfers is established.
What must be understood is that what is being proposed is essentially a global welfare system that is inextricably linked to submission to the environmentalist ideology and administered by the United Nations. The entire program neatly combines several major tenets of the anti-Western creed: internationalism, radical environmentalism, and guilt-tripping over a history of Western/European “oppression.” It also means that even as the U.S. Senate is considering adoption of a “cap-and-trade” carbon-credit system which could further cripple the American economy, the United Nations is preparing to add its own level of carbon-credit taxation to further strip wealth out of the American economy and transfer it to “developing nations.”
With all welfare schemes, no matter how much wealth is transferred, the recipients — and their advocates — may be expected to lobby for more. Such is also the case with the proposed Copenhagen carbon-credit redistributionism. According to BBCNews:
Environmental groups have been pressing the EU to come up with a strong proposal, and were not impressed with the final figure.
"The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip, rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet's climate," said Joris den Blanken, climate and energy policy director of Greenpeace-EU.
Environmental groups argue that western nations are historically responsible for causing man-made climate change, and so must bear the brunt of any "compensation money" for the developing world - a position that is shared by governments of many poorer countries.
Recently the African Union suggested that African countries alone should receive $67bn per year.
If $2 to $15 billion a year may be considered merely a “tip,” one may question what “bill” organizations such as Greenpeace-EU would like to see thrown at the European Union — and, in time, the United States. The bidding up of the price of imposing the environmentalist ideology on the entire world has only begun; one can scarcely imagine where it will be by the time of December’s conference in Copenhagen.
Photo of Jose Manuel Barroso: AP Images
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