The United Nations Environment Programme’s recent report that nearly $7 trillion in global expenditure on activities that contribute to “climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises.” It is a classic example of the organization’s misguided and unrealistic approach to environmental policy.
According to the report released on December 9, the alleged harm is caused by industries such as construction, electric utilities, and oil and gas, which seems to be yet another attempt by the U.N. to alarm the public without any real proof nor does it offer any viable solutions.
“This year’s report is a stark reminder that continuing with ‘business as usual’ poses a severe threat to our planet, reinforcing the urgent need for a transition to sustainable business practices and to stop the financing of nature destruction,” Niki Mardas of Global Canopy stated.
The report recommends that “nature-negative practices” must be “dramatically reduced and ideally repurposed in favor of nature,” is not only impractical but also economically damaging and flat out ludicrous.
The U.N. report fully supports “the transformation of the global food system, extractive sectors, real estate, and infrastructure,” which promotes investment in “nature-based solutions.”
The report also stipulated that large investment increases to the tune of double or triple fold in nature-based solutions is not sufficient to reach its climate goals. These goals align targets established at the Rio Convention, known as Agenda 21.
The targets include to “limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, halt biodiversity loss by ensuring that 30 percent of land and sea is protected by 2030, and reach land degradation neutrality by 2030.”
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Contrasting sharply with the U.N.’s narrative, Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the Center for Energy & Environment Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) brings a much-needed dose of reality to the discussion.
Ebell effectively debunks the U.N.’s alarmist claims, telling the Epoch Times, “The claim that human beings are—as the population grows and as people become wealthier and have more things, better housing, and so on—that we’re ruining the environment, it’s been exploded multiple times.”
Ebell’s critique points out the absurdity of the U.N.’s focus on diverting funds from essential infrastructure to so-called nature protection.
“It’s completely goofy to think that just because more money is invested in construction and providing electricity than in protecting nature, that shows that we’re not protecting nature, that we’ve got to shift our balance and the decimal somehow,” Ebell said.
“It doesn’t seem to occur to the United Nations that it might take a lot less money to protect nature than it does to build a city or an electric grid,” he continued.
The very title of the report, “State of Finance for Nature: The Big Nature Turnaround. Repurposing $7 trillion to combat nature loss” is more than enough to raise eyebrows. The figures it presents to rectify the drummed up problem – such as the need to increase yearly investment to $737 billion by 2050 – are not only staggering but seem disconnected from economic realities.
The report has three objectives:
- Greening finance: Reduce public and private “nature-negative” finance flows.
- Financing green: Scale public funding and private investment into “nature-based solutions.”
- Green and inclusive financial systems: Ensure a “just transition to a green and inclusive financial system for vulnerable groups, women, and indigenous peoples.”
The U.N. proposes measures like “greening finance” and scaling up investment in nature-based solutions. However, these recommendations seem to ignore the negative consequences such policies can have on economies and communities.
Ebell counters this perspective by highlighting the importance of economic development for environmental health, suggesting that the U.N.’s recommendations are not just unfounded but could be detrimental to developing countries.
“The fact is that as technology improves, and people can use resources more efficiently, the human and negative environmental footprint goes down. And that is true of every country that’s developed,” he said.
“At some point, a country’s population goes up, and you start to get wealthy, and pollution goes up for a decade or two, and then they pass over that hump, and pollution starts going down. Environmental quality starts going up. People start caring. As people have more wealth, they care more about the environment,” he continued.
The U.N.’s report and its recommendations appear to be more in line with a bureaucratic and unrealistic approach to environmental policy, lacking in practicality and disconnected from the economic realities of the global community.
Ebell sums it up brilliantly, “More money could be spent on taking care of the environment, there’s no doubt about it, but a lot of the money currently being spent is not being spent in a way that’s actually progressing the environment. We’re very inefficient.”
“So, I would say that the claim that we need to spend three or four times more per year globally is highly suspect,” he said.
