Obama pledges $3 billion for world climate fund, makes the GOP look even dumber

Obama pledges $3 billion for world climate fund, makes the GOP look even dumber

By Ben Adler

14 Nov 2014 7:56 PM


The White House announced today that President Obama is going to pledge $3 billion to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund, throwing down another gauntlet at the GOP just three days after his joint announcement with Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. and China will pursue new emissions reduction goals.

The Green Climate Fund is intended to provide assistance for developing nations in mitigating their carbon emissions and preparing for the effects of climate change like rising sea levels. It has thus far been severely underfunded. Some developed nations made pledges at the U.N. Climate Summit in September, and the U.S. clearly needed to step up.

Environmental groups offered fulsome praise for the administration’s move. Here’s a typical statement, from the Sierra Club:

Notice something strange? Like every other statement, they seem to oddly assume that the funding will actually materialize. It probably won’t. Congress appropriates money, and this Republican Congress will not appropriate money for anything “green” or “climate.” If there’s one thing Republicans hate more than sharing money with poor people, it’s sharing money with poor people in other countries to combat climate change.

As the National Journal reports, “In a statement, Sen. Jim Inhofe, the incoming chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, vowed to fight the pledge, which he said was part of a climate-change agenda that’s ‘siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.’”


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