Governments and businesses around the world spent a whopping $359 billion in 2012 — nearly $1 billion per day — on renewable energy and global warming mitigation measures, according to a new study.
However, environmentalists say that it’s less than half of what is required by international organizations to keep the world from warming beyond the 2 degrees Celsius goal set by the United Nations.
“Investment to combat and adapt to climate change is happening around the world, but it’s short of where it needs to be and efforts to grow it have not been successful enough,” Thomas Heller, executive director of the Climate Policy Initiative, said in a statement.
Global warming spending in 2012 was down from $364 billion in 2011, according to CPI, and spending for 2012 was less than 60 percent of what the International Energy Agency believes is required to stem further temperature rises.
Government funding made up $135 billion, or 38 percent, of climate spending, but government incentives played a major role in facilitating $224 billion, or 64 percent, of last years climate spending, according to CPI.
The U.S. has a wide variety of subsidies and tax incentives to companies that produce renewable energy. The most infamous may have been the Energy Department loan program that gave hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to the politically connected solar companies Solyndra and Abound Solar.
“Currently, climate finance is mostly a domestic game,” said Barbara Buchner, senior director at Climate Policy Initiative. “This implies that effective national policy is critical to increasing climate finance globally. There may also be an opportunity to increase international flows, by addressing the perception of additional risk in overseas investments.”
However, global temperatures have not risen in the last 15 years or so. Climate skeptics have seized upon this evidence to cast doubt on the theory of catastrophic global warming.
“The earth’s climate has NOT warmed in 17 years per UK Met Office! We may not see warming of the climate by more than 0.5C in next 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, a former research scientist with Environment Canada.
“Once again, I see NO CLIMATE CRISIS!” Khandekar added. “This is an exaggerated view of climate alarmists! Humans can live happily by becoming more technologically prepared, making good use of available fossil and other energy sources and be prepared to cope with future climate impacts, which will be NO different than what we witnessed 50 or 100 years ago!”
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