Has dead aid taken on a green hue?

Billericay Dave

I have the strange feeling Gormless is about to save the world from global warming only because it has 'GLOBAL' in the title, maybe if we tell him the UK debt he has run up is a 'GLOBAL' debt he will save us from that.

Stepney

Oh yippee. Show McStalin a problem and his knee jerk reaction is throw some more of our money at it.

There. Done. Problem solved. Where's the applause?

John Levett

Look at the counter in the top right-hand corner. We haven't got £800m to spare. I suggest that all those who subscribe to this giant con trick put their hands in their pockets and put their money where their mouths are.

Does anybody know how much the western world has paid to the developing world over the decades? Despite this aid (and thanks in many cases to the corruption of their leaders) many of the poorer countries still cannot produce enough food or clean water for their needs. But Brown pretends that they're going to develop 'low-carbon' energy solutions!

If this happens at all, it will be slush money to stop the developing world from using oil. Green idealism has been hijacked by corporate interests and the result will be responsible for millions of deaths in the developing world.

David Ossitt

“We've got £800 million to spare, haven't we?”

This gormless stupid oaf, this Marxist lummox, wants to give £800 million to help solve a problem that does not actually exist.

But if it did exist, there is not one chance in a trillion, that mankind could do anything about it.

Hawkeye

That money is far, far better spent here in the UK were we have a bigger impact on the environment (per head of population) than the 3rd world.

If Gordon really wants his money to have an effect then he should split it between the US and China who, between them, emit around half the world's greenhouse gas.

Hawkeye

"... thanks in many cases to the corruption of their leaders) many of the poorer countries still cannot produce enough food or clean water for their needs."

Time for a new colonialism. We in the west could do a much better job of running these countries providing we do not repeat the mistakes of apartheid and other such stupid social policies that we tried out last time.

Compared to the corruption that these regimes exhibit, our colonial administrations were staggeringly honest.

Ahh... the good ol' days and an Empire on which the sun never sets....

Number7

It's only to be expected - as part of his Scotched Earth Policy!

Coeur de Lion

Coeur de Lion

Just a minor rant, oft times repeated, but your 'pollution' picture above is of power station cooling towers emanating water vapour. A mistake often made by arts graduates.

Stepney

Well said that man! Cooling towers let off steam and yet the media persist in using them as the visual stimulus for anything to do with Climate change. That or a polar bear.

Eugh. Nasty creatures.

Pete Hoskin

Guy Liardet: In my defence, I didn't choose the picture! (But I am an arts graduate...)

Marcher Baron

The Aussies have the right approach to green issues; 5 liberals have resigned over supporting Rudd's ETS proposal on the grounds that it's totally flawed.

James

More money given by poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Swiss bankers must be rubbing their hands in glee.

Flemingcrag

Would the £800 million not be better spent on flood defences at home. The people of Cumbria were promised a £1 million in emergency relief by Gordon, that wouldn't build a rope bridge over the Derwent.

All this money going in "carbon trading" is just another "weapon of financial destruction" to rival Credit Default Swaps and the like. Most of the money will end up in the hands of the money spinners who pocketed all our savings from our High Street accounts as the banks played casino carnage with them.

Tom Pride

Okay, so you have changed the picture, but, CO2 at ambient temperatures is a gas that you cannot see- like oxygen or nitrogen or carbon monoxide. But, if you cool it, it becomes a white solid (dry ice) which you can have fun with by chucking it into water (gloves please!). You need a picture of a concert with a dry ice machine in full operation. Water vapour condensing on cold CO2 so kind of okay.

Or how about a forest or meadow where the plant life is making use of this most precious resource as one of the components for photosynthesis? Or is that too positive an image?

Alan Scott

Ah Hawkeye!
You may not know how much we old retired underpaid Colonial pensioners would like to return to our kerosene-lamped, straw-roofed, rat-haunted, kerosene-fridged,houses, with our children delivered by fine assistant medical practitioners, at £5 a week in 1958, where we truly believed we were doing a dedicated, incorruptible and reasonable job, unhindered by phoney imperialist apologists, feminists, equality pushers, multiculturalist apologists, etc. And I venture to say that, looking at my files of letters over many years from the "natives" as they are now disobligingly named - we knew them as people with individual existences and families -I think they were and are understanding and appreciative.
They don't seem to appreciate the level of corruption and poverty which their present rulers oblige them with.
Now, let's have the usual revisionist and self-flagellating bunch to comment.

Jupiter

There is no global warming or have you Speccie guys forgotten about the University of East Anglia scandal already?

Snowman

come on, be generous in this season of goodwill, just think of the many millionaires that this money will create in the developing countries.

TGF UKIP

And so the Speccie hacks continue to post as if the CRU conspiracy had never surfaced.

Pursuing as ever the village media agenda and tactics with any story the village wants to see buried - ignore it.

Hawkeye

@Alan Scott - Wow! What an idyllic lifestyle. No wonder you want to get back to it.

Watt Tyler

Jupiter

They haven't forgotten about it.

They choose to deny it.

And we keep paying through the nose for it.

Fergus Pickering

Marcher Baron, not five liberals but five Liberals i.e. Conservatives. In Australia a Liberal isn't liberal. But perhps you knew that.

TomTom

So Brown is going to raise this Fund by cancelling the MPs Pension Fund and making them use SIPPs, and having Ministers fly economy to fund his aid for the Third World.

Victor Southern

The emission levels in most poor countries must be as near zero as makes no difference. I suspect the carbon dioxide emissions of the whole of Uganda would be about the same as those of Wigan.

Does Brown seriously think that if we send some money to Ethiopia they will stop burning natural fuels and simply freeze to death in the mountainous areas in winter? How will they use the money to curb their tiny emissions? Should they slaughter their cattle and starve?

I am sure that the carbon footprint of all those delegates and journalists going to Copenhagen would dwarf the emissions for a year of Lesotho.

IMC

Why should the government give our money in this way? Why don't those who believe in "green development" (presumably this would include government ministers) invest their own money in this? It is very easy to be moral when the money is not your own.

MaxSceptic

Hugo Rifkind's rant in this week's Speccie seems to equate 'Climate Change Denial' with incest.

We sceptics are obviously winning...

Verity

Here is an excellent post by James Delingpole in The Telegraph. Comments from readers are also v good. Well worth a read.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018236/climategate-the-conservative-backlash-begins/

Verity

Hawkeye - I don't know whether you were being ironic, but I'm not, when I suggest that we (Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, NZ) simply annex these stupid countries and run them for them. Obviously, the fees for this service would be immense, but they would still be better off, with clean water, not much AIDS, no TB because we would outlaw spitting, etc., than futzing around trying to run themselves and being a bloody nuisance.