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BumRushDaShow

(170,641 posts)
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 06:14 AM Jul 2024

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 IDB’s 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

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EarthFirst

(4,178 posts)
2. Neglecting to tell the billionaires "enough is fucking enough..."
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 09:49 AM
Jul 2024

Is the biggest impediment to addressing climate change.

NNadir

(38,241 posts)
3. That calculation would depend on how the money is spent. We have spent well over that figure already for no result...
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 10:16 AM
Jul 2024

...other than the acceleration of extreme global heating:

The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy, mostly to keep vapid cultists spouting fear and ignorance from destroying the valuable nuclear infrastructure.



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)
6. Oh, but it's *per year* that she's calling for.
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 04:00 PM
Jul 2024

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)
7. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that throwing three trillion a year in the way we squandered more than 4 trillion...
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 04:30 PM
Jul 2024

...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:

There have been 2529 weekly data points such as that immediately above, recorded at the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory which are available on the data pages of the website which compare the value with the same week of the previous year. The reading above, for week 28 of 2024, shows an increase of 4.50 ppm over week 28 pf the previous year, 2023. Among all such increases for weekly data, again, 2529 of them, compared with the same week of the previous year, this is the 11th highest ever recorded. It is one of only 29 readings to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm, eight of which took place in the current year, four of which exceed increases of 5.00 ppm, three of which were in 2024. Of the top 50 week to week/year to year comparators 16 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 10 occurred in 2024, 39 in the last 10 years, and 45 in this century. Of the five readings from the 20th century, four occurred in 1998, when huge stretches of the Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests caught fire when slash and burn fires went out of control. These fires were set deliberately, designed to add palm oil plantations to satisfy the demand for "renewable" biodiesel for German cars and trucks as part of their "renewable energy portfolio." The only other reading from the 20th century to appear in the top 50 occurred in the week beginning August 21, 1988, which was 3.91 ppm higher than the same week of the previous year. For about ten years, until July of 1998, it was the highest reading ever recorded. It is now the 34rd highest.


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.

ArkansasDemocrat1

(3,213 posts)
5. We are broke. The billionaires are going to have to fund this. They benefited from it, time to pay the piper
Sun Jul 28, 2024, 12:18 PM
Jul 2024
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