The Deception Of Climate Finance
Two articles appearing side by side in the Business Report on December 5 have a glaring disconnect. One claims the Climate Response Fund can drive fiscal reform. The other notes the international distress debt is causing. Currently, it costs South Africa R1 billion a day in servicing and amounts to almost 75% of its GDP.
Emphasising this disconnect, Blessing Manale of the Presidential Climate Commission enthusiastically punts fiscal reform as (somehow) benefiting by increasing “climate finance” by up to R535 billion annually.
As the head of communications for the Presidential Climate Commission, Mr Manale’s mission is to promote the implementation of Act 22 of 2024. The entire Act is premised on the belief that climate change is man-made and that a low carbon footprint will “create decent work for all, social inclusion and the eradication of poverty,” as noted in section 3 (d) of the Act, which identifies it as loyally adhering to the UN’s Orwellian ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) programme.
Nonetheless, section 3 (g) of Act 22 contains an admission: There is “a need for a cautious approach which takes into account the limits of current knowledge about the causes and effects of climate change and the consequences of decisions and actions in relation thereto.”
If that admission of limitations in knowledge had been respected, it should have halted any pursuit of regulatory legislation. But it didn’t. Instead, section 3 (i) proceeds to assert that “an effective climate change response requires preventative measures to mitigate the causes of climate change through the adoption of adaptation measures.”
Thus, at six places in the Act, sections 3, 24, 25 (twice), 26 and 27, it confidently proclaims that its goal is premised on “the best available science and evidence.”
If the “best available science” was heeded instead of being bought and corrupted, there would be no need for Act 22. Wilfully, real science is not only being ignored. It is being censored. Besides the obvious absence of fossil fuels playing any role whatsoever in historically proven warming periods over the past 2,000 years, what is being studiously ignored is a reference to the Milankovic cycles.
Russian scientist Mulutin Milankovic found that fluctuations in the earth’s elliptical orbit of the sun resulted in marked irradiance differences and hence, temperature variations. The consequence of the eccentricity of the elliptical paths, he observed, is a perpetual cycle of change, making it very difficult to define a ‘normal climate.’
Another of his findings which has a bearing on weather patterns and temperatures is the tilt of the earth. It varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees.
Thus, despite the reality that climate change is a reality determined by natural forces millions of miles away, the same mentality that motivated the construction of the Tower of Babel now prevails.
How the closure of coal mines, de-industrialisation and decarbonisation is going to produce “decent work” and eliminate poverty while driving up debt through climate finance is the greatest deception of our time.
