It's not enough that the World Bank should be dissolved, now they have a new agenda to harm economies. This year's climate change report by the World Bank is a frightening screed filled with warnings of apocalyptic doom. Doesn't this organization have anything better to do than to needlessly scare people? The World Bank was established in 1944 as a "facilitator of post-war reconstruction and development." That job done, it now has a "present-day mandate of worldwide poverty alleviation." In taking on that burden, it has assured itself it will never fade away, because as long as there are humans, we'll have poverty, which guarantees that World Bankers will always have jobs trying (but never succeeding) in lifting the poor through means that continuously fail. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim got it half-right when he said, "We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change." Poverty has always been, and, unfortunately, always will be part of the human condition. The World Bank will never end it. But he's got it 100% wrong about the importance of the World Bank tackling climate change. If it doesn't, nothing will be lost. But if it does, lots is locked in. Policy changes to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, which the World Bank supports, will be costly. The Stern Review, for instance, says that taking greenhouse-gas emissions back to 75% of 2007 levels by 2050 could cost as much as 3.5% of global GDP. That review says a 1% gain is possible, but the more-likely scenario is a 1% loss in global GDP. A revised estimate says the loss will be 2%. The argument, of course, is that those losses are small when compared to the much bigger losses that will occur due to global warming. But what those larger costs will be are, at best, a poor guess. We have yet to experience the climate change disasters that were predicted. Nor have the temperatures, which have actually been falling, reached the scorching heights we were warned about. Yet calls for carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies are in favor among governments. A carbon tax, which is inexplicably supported by some on the right, is not a cost-free solution. In fact, it's not a solution at all. Consider Australia 's carbon-tax regime. Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian, convincingly wrote some months back that his country's carbon tax is "environmentally inconsequential, economically costly, administratively nightmarish." Meanwhile, the carbon tax in Canada's British Columbia is "an expensive, ineffective and unpopular failure," according to B.C.'s daily Internet independent The Tyee. And it's the same in Great Britain. Peter C. Glover, writing in the Canada Free Press, said earlier this year that the British carbon-tax scheme is "an abject failure." "It has actually had zero impact on Britain 's carbon footprint which, during the tenure of green taxes, actually saw emissions increase by 20%." Fact is, the poor â those the World Bank says it's in the business to help â are hurt more by carbon taxes than the middle class and rich because they spend a higher portion of their income on energy. They're also harmed more than the middle and upper classes for the same reason when carbon-trading schemes are implemented. But the World Bank is a political organization and its decisions are based on the political fashions of the day, not rational analysis. And today's popular politics demand a religious belief in the speculation that man's greenhouse-gas emissions are heating the planet to intolerable levels. A quarter of a century ago, James Bovard of the Cato Institute wrote that "although the bank started with the highest ideals," it had by the late 1980s devolved into an organization that helps "Third World governments cripple their economies, maul their environments and oppress their people. "It now consistently does more harm than good for the world's poorest." Things haven't changed much for the World Bank since 1987. It's still breaking whatever it puts its hands on. The biggest difference is that 25 years ago, it couldn't use the global warming nonsense as a wrecking ball. http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...p-at-the-world-bank.htm?p=full&fromcampaign=1
In October I would have expressed my concern. Now, after the November election I could not possibly care less about third world economies. Let them heat their huts with cow chips. I am only concerned with my own domicile and family. The world deserves what it is getting from the UN and the World Bank. Even the Red Cross has become a liberal political institution. Fuck them all.
I think you must have missed the part where they are promoting the emplemention of carbon tax schemes on us so they can take more of our money to throw at the 3rd world countries.
I did note that but as I've mentioned I bill the government directly so I can simply adjust my invoices to compensate for any tax increases that come my way. But I see what you mean. My point is that we here in the US already had our industrial revolution and have achieved our relatively high standard of living. It is countries like China and India that will be held back from unrestrained development and so they will be permanently disadvantaged so far as reaching our quality of life. That is *if* they comply... China starts up a new coal-fired power plant every month. Who is going to tell them that they can't do that? Until China and India agree to limit their carbon emissions it is unlikely that the United States, even when governed by idiots, will agree to pay a tax for carbon emissions at the world level, no?
Like you said, 'they cheat.' Actually, they don't need them to go along to get the democraps to go along with a carbon tax here. Just like Europe and Canada who already have them. But, I'm sure the left will argue they don't work because the tax isn't high enough.
I'm almost 99% sure china and india are exempt from various western environmental standards. They are not technically breaking any rules.
Isn't there a set of "world standards" that are being pushed? Isn't that the reason the US refused to comply with the agreement developed at Kyoto back quite a few years ago? I was listening to NPR on the way home from work the other day and they were interviewing a guy from the UN who was saying that the world will have to reduce the use of all carbon producing fuels by 80% in the next decade. It is starting to look to me as though we aren't just going to be taxed, we are going to be pushed back toward an agrarian society. It is madness. Never did I expect in my lifetime to see tyranny pushed onto Americans or to see civilization reject science and technology. I just didn't want to believe that mankind could be so self-destructive.
There is so much wrong with the authors assumptions and what he presents as facts that I don't even know where to start. But a big one is his dismissal of the gravity and reality of GW. Another is his repeating the falsehood that GW has stopped. Another is his saying we have not seen the climate disasters as predicted. All in all it's a piece of crap article of the sort I expect from the denier crowd.
+1 My wife is into my new philosophy now. She came out of Publix the other day to the Salvation Army guy who asked her for some change. She said "Oh, didn't you hear? President Obama handles that now."