Yellen says $3T of fresh capital is needed annually to fight climate change
Source: Politico
07/27/2024 06:26 PM EDT
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Saturday said that $3 trillion in new capital is required each year to combat climate change, and deemed the global transition to a low-carbon economy the single greatest opportunity of the 21st century.
Speaking in Belém, Brazil, after meeting with G20 finance ministers to discuss economic development this week, Yellen emphasized the need for stronger climate finance policies through 2050 to address the existential threat to communities and economic strain posed by climate change.
Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is also bad economic policy, she said.
The speech, delivered as part of an event by the Inter-American Development Bank, reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the IDBs Amazonia Forever program on its first anniversary, a project intended to promote sustainable development in the Amazon region and defend against deforestation.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/27/yellen-amazon-climate-change-00171522
cstanleytech
(28,511 posts)EarthFirst
(4,178 posts)Is the biggest impediment to addressing climate change.
NNadir
(38,241 posts)...other than the acceleration of extreme global heating:

IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."
We could easily spend fifty trillion on the reactionary program of returning our energy supplies on the vicissitudes of the weather - a condition which was abandoned in the 19th and early 20th century for a reason - and do nothing more than make global heating worse. The expenditure of trillions of dollars on the solar and wind affectation has already demonstrated as much.
Igel
(37,565 posts)That level of funding for those 9 years is < 15% of what she says is necessary (not in constant dollars, so less say < 20% to play it safe).
NNadir
(38,241 posts)...over the last nine years as expressed in the IEA graphic in my post will make any difference.
In my post I indicated that spending 50 trillion would have the same null result. That would be around around 3 trillion for 17 years.
It's very clear that "investments" in so called "renewable energy" do not work to address extreme global heating. In fact it's increasingly clear that they only entrench the use of fossil fuels and are, in fact, resulting in acceleration of the degradation of the atmosphere from the accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO2.
To my mind, and perhaps the minds of others, this can be shown by the numbers for 2024 on new accumulations as measured at the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory that I have been routinely following for a number of years, posting here about these numbers which are clear and unambiguous real, rational numbers. For example, the most recent among the long series I've composed, this from a few days ago:
Update on the Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa
Some text I modify as required for update for each in this series reflecting reality:
In this century, dominated by crowing about what so called "renewable energy" could, would, should, and even will do, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide has risen by 56.10 ppm as of the data released this morning:
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Week beginning on July 21, 2024: 424.80 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 421.28 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 398.97 ppm
Last updated: July 28, 2024
The result of throwing money around purportedly addressed at extreme global heating, now being observed worldwide, since 2015 is largely the same as if we had spent 4 trillion dollars building prayer cathedrals to ask some god or gods to end extreme global heating. That didn't work during the bubonic plague, and it won't work now, any more than updated worship of Aeolus and Apollo has worked. A reactionary return to dependence on the weather for energy supplies - abandoned in the 19th and 20th century for a reason - at precisely the time we have destabilized the weather should be recorded as way beyond foolish.
There is one, and only one, intelligent way to address extreme global heating, but at this point, after long unyielding vilification, it is 100% certain to fall under the rubric of "too little, too late." The planet is burning now.
Numbers don't lie. People lie, to themselves and each other, but numbers don't lie.
Have a pleasant Sunday evening.
cynical_idealist
(548 posts)long term thinking
ArkansasDemocrat1
(3,213 posts)Mysterian
(6,563 posts)pretty soon you're talkin' real money.