Obama: $3B for U.N. Climate Fund ‘A Smart Investment for Us to Make’

President Obama had an opportunity Sunday to respond to Republican senators’ threat to withhold the $3 billion he has pledged for the U.N. “Green Climate Fund” (GCF) unless any new climate agreement is presented to the Senate for ratification – but chose not to.

 

Instead, Obama said simply that critics of his climate agenda lost a major argument when China announced it will join international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

 

Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, he also defended climate financing, saying that helping poor countries to adapt to green technologies without having their development efforts impaired was a “smart investment for us to make.”

 

With the opening of the U.N. climate conference in Paris just days away, a group of 37 GOP senators warned Obama in a letter Thursday that they will not allow taxpayer money to go to the GCF “until the forthcoming international climate agreement is submitted to the Senate for its constitutional advice and consent.”

 

Republican opposition to the administration’s climate change program appears to be driving the administration’s resistance to calls from Europe and elsewhere for the agreement coming out of Paris to be a treaty – and therefore requiring Senate ratification by a two-thirds vote.

 

The signatories pointed out that Congress had never authorized funding for the GCF, and that Obama’s $3 billion pledge had been made “unilaterally.”

 

Read More: Obama: $3B for U.N. Climate Fund ‘A Smart Investment for Us to Make’

1 reply

Comments are closed.