There's an old, kind of back-handed joke that gets levied at the corporate consultant community from time to time. (Full disclosure: I was an independent corporate consultant for nearly 20 years.) That joke goes, "If you're not part of the solution, then there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Now, when I was in the business, I was successful in large part because I got the job done, generally ahead of schedule. But when you're talking about problems like climate change and the various Net Zero schemes, throwing money at the problem just incentivizes prolonging those problems, so more money can be thrown at it, incentivizing even more problem claims, and so on, and so on...
The Daily Sceptic's Environmental Editor, Chris Morrison, has the story of three "developing" countries that are planning to cash in up to the 2025 target date and beyond.
The latest fantasy figure for international climate aid is $300 billion a year, to be paid by a diminishing band of Net Zero fanatical countries (looking at you Europe). But at least, come 2050, when the world is awash with green riches with energy too cheap to meter, it will all be worthwhile, and the scam – pardon – worthwhile investment can stop. If only. Look no further than the three countries that on many counts have already hit Net Zero, namely Suriname, Panama and Bhutan, for guidance on future investment demands. All three countries are heavily forested and all demand billions of dollars to keep these ‘carbon’ sinks in place. Sustainability is the name of the game, or to put it another way: ‘Nice little forest we got here. Shame if anything happened to it.’
There's a word for what Suriname, Panama, and Bhutan are attempting here: Extortion. They almost certainly know that they can rely on well-meaning but ill-informed feather merchants in the developed world to keep shoveling cash at them.
But wait! There's more!
Suriname is a small South American country with a population of just 640,000 and an annual GDP of $4.5 billion. In its latest UN Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) it asks for $4.5 billion to be paid over the next decade to reaffirm its commitment to remaining carbon negative through “forest preservation”. Money is also sought from many other international sources, and the country is a leading light in the cash for ‘climate justice’ shake down. Panama is also keen on maintaining its carbon neutrality status, but, needless to say, such virtue does not come cheap. In its latest NDC, the country seems wary of producing cash figures but there is one mention of the need for $1.23 billion for 21 adaptation initiatives. A recently announced plan for a dedicated nature conservancy plan calls for new, additional, predictable, assessable and non-debt increasing international aid. In other words, a regular one-way lorry load of cash.
Bhutan stands to be the real winner here.
As the Daily Sceptic reported recently, the big winner in this giant Net Zero cash protection scheme is Bhutan. This small landlocked country in the eastern Himalayas has huge hydroelectric power, while 93% of the land is carpeted with carbon dioxide absorbing forest. As the poster country for Net Zero, its demands for waterfalls of cash are suitably impressive. With a population of only 800,000 and a GDP of around $3 billion, it notes in its latest NDC that it requires “continued and predictable” financial support amounting to $13.7 billion over the next decade.
Because, of course, they need more and more and more money. We have to give them a little grudging credit for chutzpah, or whatever they call arrogant audacity in Dzongkha. They are demanding over four times their GDP over 10 years, while their electrical needs are largely served by hydrothermal energy that their country is well-suited for, and there is no reason to think that they will suddenly start razing all of their forests.
Read More: In 2026, Davos Was Where Green Energy Went to Die
Trash Over Temps: Real Crisis Now Hitting Developing Nations Hard
The Trump administration has cut millions in American spending on this corral litter. So, at least, the American taxpayers will be spared the expense of paying extortion money to forested countries for... remaining forested. That's a good thing; for one thing, the Constitution doesn't allow for any such expenditures, and for another, our $39 trillion in national debt would seem to preclude the notion of shoveling money into other nations in the name of Net Zero.
This whole thing is a huge, gaping money pit, and that pit will only gape open wider and wider. It's like a baby bird the size of an entire nation, head up, mouth wide open, screeching to be fed - and that screeching will never stop as long as the developed world keeps pouring food - money - into it. Meanwhile, the science behind the claimed problem still informs us that the whole thing isn't even necessary.
What a lunatic world we live in at times.
