by Alex Newman
DUBAI — The United Nations climate summit is still in its first week, but Western governments, including the Biden administration, are already pledging to hand over billions of new taxpayer dollars for climate “reparations” and a “Green Climate Fund” aimed at bringing regimes ruling poorer countries to heel. Self-proclaimed world leaders say that is just the start, as global taxes and “trillions” in funding will ultimately be demanded.
The latest wealth-redistribution schemes come as voters and taxpayers in nations such as Argentina and Holland, among others, increasingly reject the parties, politicians, and policies behind them. Meanwhile, recent polls show most American adults reject the man-made climate-change hypothesis, putting U.S. officials in an awkward position at this climate summit in a major oil-producing nation on the Arabian peninsula.
Right at the start, Western governments and Japan pledged large sums for what is being portrayed as climate “reparations.” Dubbed the “loss and damage” fund by the UN and its members, the narrative behind it holds that since freer Western peoples developed first, they have put more CO2 into the atmosphere, and therefore must pay Third World governments who misrule poverty-stricken populations for the alleged harm caused.
All of this is based on the dubious hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), known to scientists as the “gas of life,” are “pollution” that must be reduced to prevent alleged man-made climate change. CO2 makes up about 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, with human emissions of the gas — including exhalation — making up just a fraction of that. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that reducing this trace gas exhaled by all human beings will prevent “climate change.”
But to compensate alleged victims for the “climate changes” that have already resulted and will still supposedly come from Western CO2 emissions over the last century, this “loss and damage” fund was agreed to in principle at last year’s UN climate summit in Egypt. With no trial and no jury, Biden and his “climate” czar John Kerry pleaded guilty on behalf of the United States a year ago. Other Western governments did as well.
This year, sentencing is taking place. On the very first day of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, governments began making pledges on behalf of their taxpayers. The German government pledged $100 million, while Japanese authorities promised to hand over $10 million to start. The Biden administration pledged $17.5 million into the reparations fund, and the European Union (EU) vowed to offer 200 million euros. But Third World regimes are demanding at least $100 billion per year just for this new fund as part of what they call “climate justice.”
The fund, which will be housed at the World Bank for now as policymakers try to find a permanent home for it, is separate from the infamous “Green” climate slush fund. That fund, which has been in existence for years, is being used to bribe Third World governments into keeping their people in poverty by prohibiting abundant energy and restricting resource development. Biden and Obama have funneled billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into that one already, in flagrant defiance of federal law, as Communist China continues increasing its gargantuan CO2 footprint.
“Climate” activists funded by the Kremlin, European taxpayers, and the Rockefeller oil dynasty — infamous for funding racial eugenics and population control — celebrated the “loss and damage” developments. “The responsibility now lies with affluent nations to meet their financial obligations in a manner proportionate to their role in the climate crisis,” Climate Action Network (CAN) “head of global political strategy” Harjeet Singh was quoted as saying in media reports about the development.
As The New American documented at the 2019 UN climate summit in Madrid, the largest financier of CAN was the Sea Change Foundation, according to the Heartland Institute. Congressional investigations revealed that the Sea Change Foundation had received almost $25 million from a shell corporation in Bermuda known as “Klein Ltd.” and controlled by Putin cronies and Russian energy interests. When asked by The New American about the funding, a Russian official laughed hysterically.
The Biden administration is already pledging some $3 billion of additional U.S. taxpayer dollars for the “Green” slush fund. That figure is in addition to $10 billion pledged for the fund by European governments and the Japanese government. But even all that is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Biden administration has planned to save the climate.
“Since day one, President Biden, Vice President [Kamala] Harris, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have treated climate change as the existential threat of our time,” the White House said in an announcement. “After spearheading the most significant climate action in history at home and leading efforts to tackle the climate crisis abroad, the United States heads into the 28th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with unprecedented momentum.”
Top officials are making clear that this is just the start of the planetary wealth redistribution. International Monetary Fund boss Kristalina Georgieva called for governments to impose a global “carbon tax” on humanity. “We are very keen to give the biggest possible incentive for decarbonization, which is putting a price on carbon,” the Bulgarian IMF chief said at the UN summit. “That price needs to go up, up, up if we are to speed up decarbonization.”
Another supposed benefit of “carbon taxes” (really CO2 taxes) would be raising even more money for government, declared Georgieva — as if government absorbing and squandering 40 percent to 75 percent of everything people produce around the world were not enough. “We are a huge proponent of carbon price,” added the IMF bigwig, whose institution has long been groomed to eventually serve as a global central bank.
In addition to “creating liquidity” by issuing “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs) out of thin air and handing them to member governments, the IMF is also building a globally interoperable system for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Leading World Economic Forum luminaries have repeatedly expressed hope that these digital currencies will be used to track and control every individual’s “carbon footprint.”
Journalist Leo Hohmann slammed the IMF chief’s comments. “Georgieva is a globalist elitist sitting there at COP28 under the banner of the IMF and World Bank, admitting in the wide open that what the globalists want is a global tax that punishes people for driving gas-powered cars, heating their homes, cooking on gas ranges, eating meat, flying on planes, etc.,” he said.
“These are all things that your typical middle-class family sees not as luxuries but as everyday necessities. If the globalists get their way, only the rich will be able to afford these things. The rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves in cold, dank little apartments, riding our bicycles to work, or catching the bus, while coming home to a dinner of meal worms and crickets. No thanks.”
King Charles of the United Kingdom, who flew to the event in a private jet despite serving as one of the world’s leading climate bullies, demanded at least $5 trillion to supposedly stave off a climate crisis. “How can we bring together our public, private, philanthropic and NGO [nongovernmental organization] sectors ever more effectively, so that they all play their part in delivering climate action?” he asked, warning of “dangerous, uncharted territory” ahead.
Tax money will be key, but the private sector will also be coerced into forking over ever greater sums. “With the private sector firmly at the table … we could mobilize the trillions of dollars we need, in the order of four-and-a-half to 5 trillion a year, to drive the transformation we need,” the British monarch declared, without specifying who would pay, how they would be forced to pay, or where exactly the gargantuan sums of money would be going. Estimates suggest the British royal family is worth almost $30 billion, but Charles did not pledge any of that at the summit.
Climate skeptics across the Western world in particular have been slamming the whole UN process as a fraud. Just this week, U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill to defund the UN itself. And around the world, political leaders who reject the “climate” agenda have been performing well in polls. Most Americans and most Republicans in Congress reject even the man-made climate change hypothesis underpinning the whole edifice, although a number of GOP lawmakers who claim to believe it are participating in COP28.
Even establishment voices have been sounding the alarm. Speaking about the climate summit on Fox News, neoconservative former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the “whole thing” was merely “an elite ripoff of everyday workers.” “When John Kerry talks about giving away money, guess what? That’s your money,” declared Gingrich. “Kerry is cheerful about taking money from you to give to these people he’s never met, who will then, by the way, mostly squander it.… It’s an absurdity. And historians will someday look back and say, how could they have been so stupid for so long?”
Whether House GOP lawmakers will provide taxpayer funding for all of the pledges and promises Biden and Kerry are making remains to be seen. But what is clear is that the public’s tolerance of such schemes is wearing thin, with only about a third of Americans saying in polls that they would be willing to pay even $1 extra per month on their energy bill to fight “climate change.” If America is going to have legitimate elections in 2024, Democrats and alarmist Republicans better hope voters do not find out what is going on in Dubai.
