(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Twenty years ago, Senate members gathered to vote on Resolution 98, colloquially known as Byrd-Hagel. Its 700-odd words could be distilled into two ideas: The U.S. shouldn’t sign any international climate agreement likely to harm its economy, and developing countries should receive no special treatment. Ninety-five senators voted in favor, none against.
Byrd-Hagel is remembered mainly for keeping the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, which President Bill Clinton signed the following year but never submitted to Congress for ratification. But it also codified a view that Donald Trump embraced from the Rose Garden on June 1, when he railed against not only the Paris Agreement but also the Green Climate Fund, a companion program to help poorer countries cope with global warming. To Trump, it’s a scam.
“Billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us,” Trump said, not entirely accurately. “Nobody even knows where the money is going,” he said, even less accurately. He made clear the fund will get no U.S. money so long as he’s president.
The fund, created in 2010, is actually pretty straightforward. Rich countries pledged to provide an initial $10 billion for projects in poorer countries, half of which is to be spent cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The other half is to go toward protecting people against the consequences of those emissions, such as flooding, drought, and sea level rise. The fund’s board, which includes an American with veto power, has so far approved 43 projects. Among them is a $58 million effort to protect the capital of Samoa from worsening cyclones. Another project got $37 million to build dams and other protections in Pakistan against floods caused by melting glaciers. A third received $36 million for barriers around Tuvalu in the South Pacific.
Academics who study climate agreements suggest Trump’s objection to the fund reflects something more than its failure to meet his high standards for financial transparency. A better explanation may be the deep-seated American ambivalence about the notion that the U.S. owes something to poor countries afflicted by climate change. Stephen Macekura, a professor at Indiana University who focuses on U.S. foreign relations and the environment, says part of the problem is a failure to grasp the basic mechanics of global warming. “It stems in part from a misunderstanding about what causes climate change,” he says. While China may be the biggest emitter today, most of what’s in the air came from the U.S.
People who work in climate finance warn that Trump’s rejection of the climate fund could encourage other rich nations to pull back. President Barack Obama’s $3 billion pledge, of which only $1 billion has been transferred to the fund, pushed other countries to increase their own commitments, says Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, who oversaw the program for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He says Trump’s refusal to provide the remaining $2 billion will make it even harder to persuade other countries to honor their current pledges and give more later.
Less money in the fund means fewer projects to cut emissions in poorer countries, says Brandon Wu, policy director at Washington-based nonprofit ActionAid USA, who sat on the fund’s board as an observer. And that puts the Paris Agreement’s stated goal of limiting global temperature increases to 2C out of reach. “There’s no way we can expect that to happen without financial and technical support,” he says.
The irony of U.S. antipathy to funding climate projects overseas is that withdrawing from those efforts hurts Americans. Matthew Kotchen, a Yale economics professor who represented the U.S. on the fund’s board under Obama, says that higher emissions overseas mean worse storms, floods, and wildfires at home. Just as important, natural disasters in poor countries, caused or amplified by climate change, lead to increased conflict and migration. “Trump himself, and maybe many of his supporters, believe that focusing on just your own national interest is sufficient,” Kotchen says. “There isn’t a recognition that we actually depend on other countries and other people for our security, stability, and prosperity.”
While that debate continues, the problems that the climate fund is meant to address get worse. A recent study found that the number of people exposed to storm surges has increased more than 20 percent since 2000, to 162 million. More than 1 billion people are exposed to floods, the vast majority of them in the developing world.
Their governments will need to divide limited resources between protecting their residents and replacing coal-fired power plants. Macekura worries they will focus increasingly on the former, sending emissions ever higher—especially if rich countries reduce their assistance. “The Obama administration acted as though the U.S. was turning over a new leaf,” he says. “Yet here we are again.”
The bottom line: Abandoning the Green Climate Fund could deter other nations from contributing, slowing emissions cuts and hurting the U.S.
To contact the author of this story: Christopher Flavelle in Washington at cflavelle@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Philips at mphilips3@bloomberg.net.
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