So much for the Copenhagen Accord. The Obama administration apparently is backing off its promise made in Copenhagen to provide up to $100 billion in aid to developing countries.
According to a repot in today’s Climatewire:
America’s contribution to $100 billion in annual global climate change funding by 2020 may not be over and above existing foreign aid, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated yesterday.
The promised money — which Clinton announced at the U.N. climate summit in Denmark last month and pledged the United States would take a lead role in mobilizing — was a key element in the final global warming accord that world leaders approved.
Yet while the Copenhagen Accord, as it is known, calls for “scaled up, new and additional” money to help poor nations cope with climate change-provoked disasters, Clinton sidestepped the commitment when asked directly if the U.S. portion would be additional.
“We don’t know yet, because we don’t know what the Congress is going to do,” Clinton told a crowd at the Center for Global Development.
President Obama called the Copenhagen Accord a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough.” While Obama’s breaking of a promise certainly is not “unprecedented” — whatever happened to healthcare discussions being broadcast on C-SPAN — it should be meaningful to Americans. Don’t believe President Obama.