Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiAt World Bank, Climate Change Isn't Part of The Equation
WASHINGTON -- At the World Bank -- heavily influenced by its largest shareholder, the United States -- the effect of projects on climate change is not even calculated.
Bank environment officials pressed to account for emissions in the mid- to late-'90s and again in an unpublished paper in 2002, and only now, five years later, are attempting again.
"Our biggest obstacle has been that politically, [climate change] is very controversial," said Kristalina Georgieva, the bank's strategy and operations director for sustainable development.
In February 2006, for example, the World Bank's operating vice presidents gathered to discuss a draft of a progress report, requested by the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations, titled "Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development: Towards an Investment Framework." The bank executives endorsed the report, according to minutes obtained by the Government Accountability Project and authenticated by The Times.
But afterward, the summary noted, the office of then-World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz -- a President Bush appointee -- "asked the team to refocus the paper shifting from a climate lens mainly to a clean-energy lens." A note of uncertainty should be injected, a top Wolfowitz aide instructed: "Elaborate on the challenge of mitigating climate change and reducing the vulnerability to the impact of climate change."
"Climate change" was duly removed from the name of the paper, which was issued within months as "Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework."
"There's very good stuff" in the plan, but it's "a hodgepodge of ideas," said Bruce Jenkins, policy director of the Bank Information Center, a private World Bank watchdog group. "The bank requires a much more direct action plan."
Georgieva said that against this backdrop, "it's very difficult to be super-effective, to shift big-time to tackle this problem."
Like the U.S. Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corp., the World Bank has contributed to fossil-fuel energy projects, including a recent grant to help develop lignite coal mining and power plants in Kosovo, despite a review the bank commissioned in 2001 that suggested phasing out oil and gas investments by 2008 and extending a moratorium on coal.
Calculating the emissions for each proposal is a start, Georgieva said: "What you measure is what you worry about. It serves as an example for others. It should be part of the decision process [though], it should not be yes and no."
Georgieva says she is optimistic that this time it will happen, given the recent United Nations report stating conclusively that humans are causing global warming. Even so, Georgieva estimates it will be at least two years before emissions are integrated into decision-making.
Given the urgency, she added, "we are not moving fast enough. It's not possible to be moving fast enough."
judy.pasternak@latimes.com
© 2007 The Los Angeles Times
7 Comments so far
Show AllNot many government programs are ever forced to estimate their global warming effects (and notice that the LA Times is following Frank Luntz's advice: call it climate change, not global warming).
This is also true for states and cities across the United States. For example, there is a massive push by water corporations and allies to install desalination all across the United States - a massively energy intensive process, to be fueled largely by natural gas, that will result in yet more CO2 emissions. It's being pushed through at the state and local level by corporations in bed with city councils and city-county water departments.
The World Bank is notorious - look at the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, built for the benefit of ExxonMobil at a cost of $4 billion - the Bank officials claimed it would result in 'regional development', but as is the case with almost all African oil operations, the local people suffer pollution and warfare, and the profits are extracted along with the oil.
From the top to the bottom, the story is the same. The main obtacle that needs to be overcome to take action on global warming is the global fossil fuel-based energy-finance system, which continues to do its utmost to prevent the necessary 90% reduction in global fossil fuel use.
For more information on this crucial issue, check out the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network: http://www.seen.org/
You can also take action to stop the WB's harmful policies by coming to Washington, DC this fall (Oct. 19-21) during the WB/IMF Board meetings. More information is available here: http://octoberrebellion.org/
Reduce the human population through peaceful family planning programs and thereby reduce the economy and its impact on the weather cycles, then the Earth and humanity can survive. Otherwise, business as usual will kill everything and everyone.
Lets face it, we are part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution. Lets go back to Bronze Age, I'm ready...only those who are psychologically ready for what we are facing will know what to do in order to survive. The others will either commit suicide or become insane.
I'm still trying my best to avoid these things to happen and I have to admit that western conscienceness about the problem has evolved...but people still think "the governments" will find a solution or we will be ok by some hat trick and it is becoming harder everyday to keep hope in face of such ignorance. My faith will never die though, and it goes to the belief that those who knew and tried their best will be here afterwards...
These enormous disasters all get headlines and that's a good thing. BUT the media, and the World Bank (no surprise to me) do not make the obvious connection between all of this and GLOBAL WARMING. Hell if New York City and Florida sank I could imagine the politicians, World Bank etc (ruling class if you will) explaining it up and down and not even mentioning global climate change. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time!
I'm telling you, no one will do anything about global warming until a HUGE disaster happens on American soil. Then you'll hear "Oh THAT'S what they were talking about!" We would just roll our eyes.
Just to add, how unfair it is the ones suffering first, and the most, are the poor like those children in the photo above. As to global warming, are we waking up to global poverty and hunger yet?
The World Bank correctly recognizes that the capitalist system is incapable of solving the climate change crisis that it has caused with its inherent need for constant expansion and growth.
So they have decided that the only logical thing to do is to keep plundering the planet's resources for every last dollar of profit they can squeeze out of it before ecological catastrophe sends us back to the Bronze Age.
The question is, what are we prepared to do about it?
GLOBAL WARMING DIVERSION.
After six years of stonewalling & deception to impede global warming mitigation and throwing bones to appease the public, this administration is now impeding efforts to counteract this threa in th UN. The dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data used by them to conceal and derail corrective measures for this threat and other vital environmental reforms has always been apparent--and all indicators still show that their motives have not changed.
Contrary to their assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our opposition Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution.
Evidence linking carbon pollution to warming has been as close to certain as science can be for many years. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists.
Often overlooked is the fact that the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were not an issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.
The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution and related environmental measures can only worsen if we allow this reckless and unlearned president to continue this war on the environment.