COP15: the Vortex of Global Socialism

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Yesterday at COP15 (that's eco lingo for the Copenhagen Climate Conclave) European leaders signed off on "7.2 bn Euros* over the next three years to a fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change. Announcing the deal, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said all 27 EU member nations would contribute." (...) >>>

* That's peanuts compared to what is actually being claimed! Estimates range between $100 and $350 bn a year.

To those who labor under the illusion that it's just "government money", just wait till next tax day. Or your energy bills.

Perceptive followers of the news may be aware of a small scandal in the margins of COP15, dubbed "Climategate". It is a confirmation of what many long suspected: that there's a mechanism at work called "confirmation bias", if not - that downright fraud is taking place. Where politics and science meet, corruption ensues.

Others hold that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) can never be proved. It is a given that we will just have to accept as dogma, on the off chance that it's actually true (what was that about a pseudo religion?). It is also true that the universe isn't static: apart from the eternal laws of physics, things are changing all of the time - the climate - meaning: the composite of prevailing weather conditions in a given region (which is why "saving the climate" is such a ridiculous claim) is not exempted.

On this off chance leaders are pledging away billions of tax payers' money in a time of economic crisis and hand it over to developing or stagnant countries in the world, under the radar and as an alternative money stream, now that development aid is no longer an unquestioned form of global welfare.

The BBC is reporting that the G77 bloc of developing nations and China has reacted furiously to the EU offer. Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, representing the G77 has accused them of acting like "climate sceptics" (apparently as a replacement term of 'fascist!' now that warmists have claimed that ad hominem as their badge of honor).

He said during a news conference that "they are essentially saying that the problem does not exist. Their pledge does not address financing in its totality. We want to know where the money is coming from. Is it overseas development aid or not?"

Yes, we would also like to know!

"Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (...) acknowledged that the pledges were "a combination of new and old resources".

"Almost all of the money is likely to be simply a relabelling of existing aid commitments," said Anne-Catherine Claude, of ActionAid."

"Oxfam EU climate change adviser Tim Gore was also disappointed. "(...) this money is not even new - it's made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made," he added."

Arend Jan Boekestijn is a Dutch scholar and a subsciber to Douglass North, Wallis & Weingast's theory "Violence and Social Orders". (His article "Losing the war (in Afghanistan) is not an option" was posted here yesterday.)

Boekestijn's book "De Prijs van een Slecht Geweten" (The Price of a Bad Conscience) (Aspekt) hit the bookstores in the Netherlands just yesterday. He's making the case that development aid in its present form is doing more harm than good. He's doing so on the basis of the following arguments:

1. The moral hazard: the UN sends peace missions, the developed world healthcare and eduction. What's there left to do for a national Government? Sustainability and aid addiction?

2. The cause of poverty is bad governance (autocracies, Socialist experiments, theocracies, etc.) .

3. There's no clear correlation between aid and economic development.

4. Good governance ought to be a condition for debt relief.

5. More aid doesn't lead to better economic growth. There's no lack of capital in Africa, but capital in Africa has a how productivity.

6. Aid harms democratization: why raise taxes when aid keeps poring in? No taxation, no representation. To which we may add: erroneously applied, democracy may actually legitimize tyrants, and pernicious collectivist regimes.

7. Aid leads to a hard local currency at the expense of exports.

8. Aid is supporting evil regimes and oppressors.

It's an interesting study and we'll be back on this issue shortly.

But while the Marxist poverty narrative is proved false, the combined forces of transnational progressivism and climatism are ensuring that a parallel stream of money keeps poring into the vortex of global Socialism.

Related dossier:

- "The Perversion of Development Aid"