Overnight Energy: GOP senators push to block climate fund money
GOP SENATORS: NO CLIMATE FUND MONEY: Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is once again leading a group of Republican senators in demanding that Congress stop the Obama administration's attempts to pay money into the United Nations' Green Climate Fund.The lawmakers are asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to write into its bill a provision preventing any funds from going to the international body, which uses its money to help developing nations cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.
It comes after the State Department paid $500 million into the fund, its first such payment, pointing out that last year's appropriations bill did not set aside money for the fund, but didn't prohibit officials from shifting around money from other places.
"We stand firmly opposed to taxpayer dollars going to the GCF," the senators wrote in the Tuesday letter.
"Congress has never authorized or specifically approved funding for the GCF. Giving billions of dollars to an international climate fund is a significant waste of American resources," they said. "With the United States' national debt exceeding $19 trillion and the difficulty finding resources to make critical investments here at home, we should not be sending taxpayer dollars overseas to international bureaucrats in the name of climate change."
Here is the note I sent to each of them via their "contact me" pages on their Senate websites. Assuming it will make no difference, and that I will not get a response, but if they hear enough messages like this, maybe they will reconsider their backwards views....
Dear Senator,
Your recent opposition to the payment of money to the Green Climate Fund
is appalling. It is time for the Republican Party to come to grips with the
fact that the climate is changing, and that humans are at least in part a cause
of the changes. We as a society need to be stepping up and doing our part to
help ensure that our children and grandchildren have a planet left worth
inheriting. Continued opposition to anything good for the environment should
NOT be a part of any political platform, especially that of the Republican
Party, the party of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest conservationists
the country has seen. A sustainable future is the only future, and the
backward-facing views of the Republican Party simply are not in line with that.
The views and actions of the Republican Party will do nothing except for place
the planet on a fast-track collision course with a death sentence. I implore
you to reconsider your opposition to the GCF, and to discontinue standing in
the way of the will of the people to make a better home for everyone, yourself
included. Should you continue to oppose anything that is good for the future of
the planet, then I hope that you will find yourself soon out of office.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Taylor
