India Gov't: Climate Billions an Entitlement, not Aid

India: Climate Billions an Entitlement. By Chris Horner
Planet Gore/NRO, Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I recall being in the room at the Hague in November 2000, when then-French president Jacques Chirac’s opening remarks praised the Kyoto Protocol as “the first component of an authentic global governance" (and I remember my editor with UPI, for whom I was writing from the talks, berating me and refusing to run my piece reporting this as hysterically making up something no one would ever say . . . )

I even more clearly recall Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wisc.) holding an impromptu press availability afterward in the hallway outside the media cubes, instructing European reporters that if there is a better way of making sure that the U.S. stays out of any such pact than praising it as “global governance,” he doesn’t know what it is. (I also remember one of the Brit reporters, from the Guardian I believe, snapping back “Bollocks! Bollocks!” at the congressman.)

With Chirac’s departure to other pastimes such as being “mauled by his own ‘clinically depressed’ pet dog,” I think we may have found that better way to keep the U.S. out of such absurdity.

Sitting down? Good. Here’s a Climate Wire story’s headline and opening today:

Climate funding is entitlement, not aid, India says

The West owes billions of dollars to developing nations in order compensate
for climate change, India's government says.

In a submission to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the
Indian government warns rich countries against defining funding for adaptation
or sustainable development in vulnerable nations as traditional development aid.
Rather, it says, it is an "entitlement" for poor countries whose development
will be further set back by global warming.

"There is a tendency to equate such resources to foreign 'aid' or Overseas
Development Assistance," the government wrote, adding that financing should not
be left up to the legislatures in wealthy nations, nor should it be in the form
of loans.

"The providers of finance cannot be discretionary 'donors,' but must be
legally obligated 'assessees,'" the document says.

Yeaahhh.