DV Journal

Who decides what you hear about climate change? The United Nations wants to be the arbiter of what you are told is “true” on this crucial issue. The more that we examine this proposition, the scarier the concept gets.

The UN has launched a global initiative called the “Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change” designed to promote the publication of “verified” climate change information by media outlets and on social media. This move comes just when social media companies like Meta are reversing their years-long policy of “fact-checking” climate change policy debate—which Meta admits resulted in censorship.

But it gets worse. The UN’s goal is not to highlight basic things like the broad scientific consensus that climate change is real. No, its intention is to “boost support for urgent climate action.” What this translates to is the UN using its global might to push for policies like sweeping new climate taxes, along with a race to net-zero, extremist, economy-punishing policies, wealthy countries paying poor countries huge sums for climate reparations, and ending fossil fuels entirely within 25 years.

Already, the UN has started setting out its supposed “facts on climate”—and these show even more reason for concern. One such “fact” is the contention that climate change is a major threat to human health because fossil fuel-caused air pollution causes some 8.7 million deaths a year. Bizarrely, this figure is more than twice what the UN’s own World Health Organization estimates. In misstating the threat to life, the UN ignores the fact that deaths from climate-related catastrophes have declined 97.5% over the past century—and that far more people die from cold than heat. And in focusing on air pollution, the UN deliberately confuses climate policy which cuts CO₂ with the real solution, which is using scrubbers on smokestacks and catalytic converters on cars to cut air pollution.

Another “fact” the UN is promoting: the idea that sea level rise could submerge small islands like Kiribati. This claim is often repeated by activists, but that doesn’t make it true: even the New York Times acknowledges the vast scientific literature showing Kiribati and almost every atoll is stable or increasing in size.

The UN also claims, wrongly, that “solar panels and wind turbines make good use of land” (in reality, solar and wind are some of the most land-intensive energy forms) and that the transition to clean energy will create millions of jobs. The latter is an economically illiterate mistruth: in the US, solar employs 35 workers to produce the same amount of energy that one natural gas worker can produce, meaning natural gas is much more efficient because 34 workers can be freed to do other important work, increasing social welfare.

And the UN repeats the oft-told lie that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. They gloss over this mistruth by measuring the cost only when the sun is shining or the wind blowing, ignoring the costs of intermittency and unreliability. The fact is, no country with significant solar and wind has low electricity costs — indeed, on average, electricity costs are two or three times higher than for countries with little solar and wind.

All this can only be described as propaganda. The fact is that there are complex, important, and ongoing debates taking place among climate scientists and economists. The UN would pretend no such uncertainty exists on issues like how much the world would warm from a doubling of CO₂. And it would entirely ignore the contributions from climate economists that show that most of the “urgent climate action” policies do little for the climate at great cost.

An example of what it would likely call “disinformation”: the most recent research on the costs and benefits of net-zero climate policies that shows average annual benefits of $4.5 trillion over the 21st century and much larger costs of $27 trillion per year.

What this means is that the UN is actively trying to shut down debate and promote just one policy approach. Consider if it did the same thing on the migration debate, picking one extreme policy position of completely open (or closed) borders everywhere, and declared that anything not aligned with this policy was wrong.

 The notion that US taxpayers should spend hundreds of trillions of dollars on poor climate policies is surely worth discussion and debate.

Especially as it comes under a microscope from the Trump Administration, the UN should think twice about trying to suppress discussion. The UN and other multilateral organizations need to return to their roots of helping humanity to navigate the world for peace and prosperity. Now is the time to sharpen the focus on peace and prosperity through sound, data-based advice.

Climate finance is big business, padding the pockets of big banks and trapping developing countries in debt that locks them out of global markets. The least developed countries spend twice as much servicing debt as they receive in climate finance — which amounted to just 3 percent of the total pot. Development banks and global climate funds are supposed to provide lifelines, but they often tie up funds in red tape. Credit ratings dissuade the former from lending to high-risk countries, and the latter are notorious for lengthy lending processes, taking years. But the problem isn’t nefarious lenders or opportunist billionaires; the problem is a broken system — a money-go-round that profits the rich and plunges the poor further into crises.

The failures of climate finance play out again and again, having far-reaching implications, from avoidable climate crises to mass migrations and hasty land grabs. Last year when Nigeria’s Alau Dam broke, nearly half a million people were displaced, and damage was in the hundreds of millions. The dam broke just weeks before the World Bank was expected to approve a $500 million loan to improve dam safety across the country. Residents of Antiqua and Barbuda have been engaged in a bitter battle over land rights since Hurricane Irma ravaged the islands in 2017, increasing debts that made the country vulnerable to land grabs like the contested Barbuda Ocean Club. With the United States pulling out of the Paris Agreement, climate finance faces greater uncertainty. The system is on the verge of transformational shift — led by agile actors and defined by savvy investors.

Enter the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), a lesser-known UN agency changing the game — swapping debt traps for market opportunities; fast-tracking funds to the most vulnerable; and working directly with local communities to create bridges with private investors.

“A big problem with development finance, including climate finance, is that private capital doesn’t go into risky markets. UNCDF was created to absorb that risk and clear a path for the flow of private capital. We make it safer for banks to lend money, companies to set up shop, and for investors to turn a profit. We work with countries to create sustainable marketplaces, and more markets benefit everyone,” said Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, who took the helm of UNCDF as Executive Secretary earlier this year.

Where that finance flows, opportunities replace crises. In Tanzania, the agricultural region of Tanga spent a decade trying to access climate funds. The project was awarded money for design but not implementation — time and money wasted.

That’s when Tanga UWSA began working with UNCDF to launch East Africa’s first green bond. “The bond let us do something big that we couldn’t have done with commercial loans that depend on our financial status,” said Geofrey Hilly, Managing Director of Tanga Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Authority (UWSA).

“It was a wakeup call for the government; we’ve pioneered the use of these bonds, and the country is learning for to fix their financial structure,” said Hilly.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, half the population is without energy. According to Davies Musoso, Head of Alternative Investments at Old Mutual Investment Group Zimbabwe, that gap is an opportunity. Last year, with help from UNCDF, Old Mutual launched a $100 million private equity fund focused on renewables. Since September, they’ve raised over $20 million locally. Now, they’re courting international investors.

“Support from UNCDF was important,” said Davies. “They helped open doors … meetings with the World Bank, the U.S. Embassy … This attracted government funding, interest from the development finance institutions, and the private sector. They lowered the investment risk profile.”

“You need success stories to attract more investors,” said Nitin Garg, co-founder of FLOW, an African Fintech company expected to triple in value this year. UNCDF was their first investor. The loan was only $20,000, but it gave FLOW the proof of credit they needed to attract international impact investors.

Fixing climate finance doesn’t just deliver clean water and energy; it opens markets to investors who are increasingly deterred by new and volatile U.S. policies, which are hostile toward renewables — one of the fastest growing global markets.

Risk will always be a defining factor, and this is where UNCDF shines.  “Someone needs to be first in and change the risk profile in these countries, and that’s what we’re uniquely designed to do. “We’re creating opportunities,” says Kurukulasuriya. “We need to focus on those least developed and fragile countries. A more prosperous world benefits everyone.”

The end of the year is a time when we reflect on the best ways to give back in the holiday season and in the year ahead. There’s no shortage of fantastic ways to do good, and a myriad of great charities that help noble causes, from reducing poverty and boosting education to protecting the environment and advancing healthcare.

Sadly though, the dispiriting truth is that the fight against poverty, disease and hunger has lost momentum. Why haven’t we made more headway against the big problems facing the world in recent years? There are plenty of answers, but one reason is that the global development industry has tried to do too much at once.

In 2015, the United Nations came up with a 169-point agenda to fix all the problems facing humanity by 2030. The so-called Sustainable Development Goals were agreed to by all the world’s leaders with the best of intentions. Yet, with five years left, the world is wildly off-track on almost all the 169 promises. Trying to focus on everything means we have prioritized nothing and achieved very little.

The new year offers us a fresh opportunity to rethink this approach. Instead of trying to do it all — as a society and as ordinary citizens with our own giving — we could prioritize the interventions that create the most effect. That means those that provide the highest returns on investment for people, the planet and future generations.

The truth is that the best investments aren’t necessarily the ones that attract headlines or gain attention from celebrities. I have collaborated with more than 100 of the world’s top economists and several Nobel Laureates to establish which of the many global goals would deliver the most return on investment.

Across hundreds of pages of peer-reviewed, free analysis, we have identified the 12 smartest things we could do to make life better for the poorer half of the planet. These solutions are seldom making headlines, but they are cheap and incredibly powerful.

There is a compelling case to focus on tackling the diseases that have already been wiped out in rich countries like malaria and tuberculosis, which have become diseases of poverty. The simple act of providing more anti-mosquito bed-nets and expanded malaria treatment across Africa would save 200,000 lives yearly, with benefits worth $48 for every dollar spent. Healthy, productive individuals are more likely to innovate, work and contribute to the world, ultimately benefiting everyone.

Another great cause is maternal and infant health. When a pregnant mother lacks essential nutrients and vitamins, her child’s growth and brain development will be slower. Her kids will be condemned to do worse throughout their lives. A mere $2.31 can ensure that an expectant mother receives a basic multivitamin supplement that means her children will grow up healthier, smarter and more productive. Every dollar spent on nutritional supplements for pregnant women can yield up to $38 in economic benefits. This is not a far-off utopia. It’s a proven solution that could be scaled up immediately.

Another simple but powerful investment is in improving learning. In the world’s poorest countries, only one-in-10 10-year-olds can read and write. We need to fix this, not just because it’s the right thing to do but to reduce future strife and reliance on aid, and to ensure countries can write their own success stories.

Countless studies show that if seven hours of daily schooling remain traditional and ineffective, after one year the student will have learned as much as normally takes three years. The costs are modest: Sharing a tablet costs about $31 per student annually. The return on investment is extraordinary: Children who learn more become more productive adults, resulting in a return of $65 for every dollar spent. This is a great long-term investment for a more stable, self-sufficient world.

My hope for the world in 2025 is that governments and institutions will stop dithering and focus on solutions that yield the best results. By prioritizing what truly works, we could accomplish more in one year than we have managed over a decade of indecision.

On a personal level, each of us can contribute to making 2025 the year we commit to real progress for everyone. As the new year approaches, we must shift our focus from chasing endless, unrealistic goals and instead recognize what’s already working. Our resolution should be to invest our time, attention, resources and political will into actions that create the greatest positive change in people’s lives.

Nov. 29 will mark 75 years since United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which endorsed the establishment of neighboring Jewish and Arab states in the Holy Land. 

One of the U.N.’s most significant decisions, it helped restore a sovereign country for Jews in the ancestral land from which they were exiled by the Romans, who renamed the territory Syria Palaestina. 

For Palestinian Arabs, the plan offered something even more groundbreaking: the creation of a Palestinian country for the first time.

But it is only Israelis who will soon celebrate the 75th anniversary of their country’s birth–and its hard-won success. Palestinian leaders will do what they’ve always done: bemoaning the deferral of Palestinian nationalism’s stated primary objective and incriminating Israel in it. 

Often, this incrimination takes the form of delegitimization – by presenting Israel as a foreign, “colonial” entity and by vilifying Israel as evil.

Palestinian advocates frequently promote a map showing Israel’s share of the land expanding from 1948 until today, while Palestinians’ has diminished. The message is clear: Zionist territorial gluttony is boundless – and Palestinians are nothing but dispossessed underdogs.

Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Palestinian activists, now with the help of an automatic U.N. majority maintained by nearly 60 Arab and Muslim governments, have perfected the craft of political polemicizing.

Beyond the decades and centuries omitted from Palestinians’ visual synopsis of Israeli-Palestinian history is all that it obscures even during the period it highlights. 

After all, it was the Zionists who, in 1947, embraced Resolution 181’s two-state vision–even with Jews offered but a small fraction of their small homeland, and no share in its beating heart, Jerusalem. 

The Arab side refused and fought repeated wars to eliminate Israel–gradually losing territory in the process.

Arab governments declined to establish a Palestinian state even when they fully controlled the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1949 until 1967. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded with a charter plotting Israel’s total destruction.

In 1967, the Arab League declared, “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”

It was Palestinians who in the 1980s launched the first violent “intifada” against Israel and sparked Israeli-Lebanese warfare by attacking Israel from Lebanon.

Fanatic Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad – proxies of Iran, which pledges “death to America, death to Israel” – sought to undermine reconciliation with waves of suicide bombings in the 1990s. The atrocities came following the Oslo Accords, which afforded almost all Palestinians self-rule.

At talks at Camp David in 2000, a dovish Israeli government extended an unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood in nearly all the so-called “occupied territories” – compromising even on Jerusalem and Judaism’s single holiest site, the Temple Mount. 

Palestinians balked–causing then-President Bill Clinton to tell PLO leader Yasser Arafat, “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one”–and began an even deadlier intifada.

Later, in 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initiated a complete, unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including every single Jewish settlement community. Within months, Hamas violently seized the territory and escalated incessant terrorism from it.

In 2008, Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, went even further than the Camp David proposals. 

Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s replacement, declined to accept or even make a counteroffer. 

Instead, Abbas has given speeches maligning Israel as an “apartheid” state and explicitly tried to “internationalize” the conflict by weaponizing U.N. bodies against Israel.

He has also invented a way for Palestinians to have their cake and eat it too, by having the U.N. recognize in 2012 a not-yet-existent “State of Palestine” even as Palestinians evade all the responsibilities of a state by asserting they remain wholly under occupation. 

Palestinian rulers endemically glorify violence against Jews but Abbas insists that Israel–with its two million Arab citizens–is “racist.” 

He also decries the failure of Resolution 181 to deliver Palestinian statehood while continuing to reject the critical other half of the resolution’s program: Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Abbas claims that Israel’s Jewish identity makes it inherently discriminatory. He has expressed no similar concerns about the dozens of countries whose flag features a crescent or a cross.

In 1947, two years after the Holocaust, desperate but visionary Jews grasped a modest opening for a better future and made something of it, building a thriving, democratic state despite all odds–and peace with multiple Arab and Muslim countries. 

This Nov. 29, the U.N. will mark its annual day of solidarity with Palestinians – the only such day for a particular people–and Palestinian representatives will again rue the lot of their constituency. 

If that lot is to change, Palestinians’ approach must too. Seventy-five years of grievance, aggression, and maximalism have yielded little. 

Over the next 75 years, a path of compromise and cooperation can reap far greater dividends. We’ve seen Israel do it.

But are Palestinian leaders interested?

The pushback against Environmental, Social and Governance has begun. It’s coming from market influencers like Vivek Ramaswamy, cultural influencers like Dilbert creator Scott Adams lambasting it in his (banned) comic strips, and 19 Republican governors going after the banks that push it. It’s a good thing.

Washington and Wall Street want to save the planet, much of it choking on Chinese coal dust. Its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies, particularly the Security and Exchange Commission’s ESG policy proposal for investors, pretend China exists on another planet. Big business and big investment houses wouldn’t have it any other way. They’ll punish the locals for not being environmentally sound. But China can throw chemicals down a river and burn a thousand suns, and it’s OK.

Adherence to ESG rules would make it more expensive to do business in the United States. It is another bad idea that will further drive manufacturing away from the United States and into Asia, led by China.

The SEC is not alone.

An ESG bill passed the House of Representatives in 2021. Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters said, “It’s past time Congress makes ESG requirements explicit.” There are two ways to interpret that. One: make sure investment products and companies declaring to be ESG have the same metrics. Two: ensure companies comply with climate policies to keep them ESG-friendly. Both are valid points if ESG policies are mandated by the SEC or Congress. That bill is now in a Senate committee. It will likely die there.

ESG is a U.N. endeavor that became an investment product. It’s big in Europe. The idea is that portfolio managers and lenders will direct capital to companies that are easy on the environment, hire women and minorities, and are good corporate stewards of the communities they serve. As a standalone, no one is against this idea or real, quality metrics that provide transparency to ESG investors.

But ESG has moved away from being just an investment product. It’s political now. Democrats fully embrace ESG. Republicans, not so much. Significant “woke capital,” as Ramaswamy calls them, loves ESG.

Shareholders can weaponize information from where a company’s electric power comes from to how much fertilizer the local rancher was selling beef to Cargill is using, all to pressure a business based on climate risk or other social causes packaged as environmental justice. Compliance requires costly lawyers who understand the rules. Business leaders then need to shift gears to ensure they are not running afoul of the climate police — which includes global bankers like Rabobank and asset managers like BlackRock that threaten to take their bank loans and investments elsewhere.

The proposed SEC rule will not only define ESG standards but it will also require publicly traded companies to comply with lowering greenhouse gas emissions or risk losing their lenders. This also affects private companies that sell to publicly traded ones. “Not green enough? Sorry, we need to find a greener partner.”

It’s everywhere. The Department of Labor is proposing new rules on pension plans that will require ESG investments as a matter of fiduciary duty.

ESG is voluntary for now. Democrats want to legislate its permanence. They are easily sold on ESG as good for the planet. Big lenders see it as corporate uniformity, doing “good,” and risk reduction. But if implemented, the SEC proposal will be a mega headwind for the United States as greenhouse gas emissions become a costly investment risk — despite the U.S. being a leader in reducing greenhouse gases and environmental standards.

None of these climate policies exist in application anywhere in China.

Picture this: a U.S. mutual fund with an ESG focus invests in Chinese solar companies and supply chains. Chinese polysilicon maker Daqo New Energy trades on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s in climate-change-themed funds, which are total ESG plays. Daqo was placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2021 for forced labor. So? BlackRock, Templeton, PIMCO, Fidelity, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and State Street own 13 million shares. Americans who own the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF own Daqo, which probably uses Muslim prison labor.

ESG was designed to be voluntary. Now its strictest adherents, which include major Wall Street investors and lenders, want it to be mandated. Meanwhile, the usual hypocrites at global companies who are ESG fans will continue sourcing from China, where widgets are made thanks largely to coal-fired power plants. Those are bad here. Not ESG enough. But weak environmental rules and no women in power anywhere, that is perfectly fine in China.

No U.S. company should be forced to follow a climate policy its biggest rival can ignore. ESG must remain an optional investment product, not an investment policy.

A new U.N. report has revealed the disturbing news that the number of global disasters has quintupled since 1970 and will increase by 40 percent in coming decades. It finds that more people are affected by disasters than ever before, and the U.N. deputy secretary general warns humanity is “on a spiral of self-destruction.”

Astonishingly, the United Nations is misusing data, and its approach has been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Its finding makes for great headlines — but it just isn’t grounded in evidence.

When the U.N. analyzed the number of disaster events, it made a basic error — and one that I’ve called it out for making before: It basically counted all the catastrophes recorded by the most respected international disaster database, showed that they were increasing and then suggested that the planet must be doomed.

The problem is that the documentation of all types of disasters in the 1970s was far patchier than it is today, when anyone with a cellphone can immediately share news of a storm or flood from halfway around the world.

That’s why the disaster database’s own experts explicitly warn amateurs not to conclude that an increase in registered disasters equates to more disasters. Reaching such a conclusion “would be incorrect” because the increase really just shows improvements in recording.

You would think that the United Nations would know better, especially when its top bureaucrats use language that sounds like Armageddon is here.

Unsurprisingly, climate change is central to the U.N. agency’s narrative. Its report warns there is a risk of more extreme weather disasters because of global warming, so the acceleration of “climate action” is urgently needed. Somehow, the huge international organization has made the same basic fallacy that many of us do when we see more and more weather disasters aired on the TV news. Just because the world is more connected and we see more catastrophic events in our media doesn’t mean that climate change is making them more damaging.

So how do we robustly measure whether weather disasters really have become worse? The best approach is not to count the catastrophes, but to look instead at deaths. Significant losses of life have been registered pretty consistently over the past century.

This data show that climate-related events — floods, droughts, storms, fires and temperature extremes — are not actually killing more people. Deaths have dropped by a huge amount: In the 1920s, almost half a million people were killed by climate-related disasters. In 2021, it was fewer than 7,000 people. Climate-related disasters killed 99 percent fewer people than 100 years earlier.

The U.N. report does include a count of “global disaster-related mortality” — and manages to find that, contrary to the international disaster database, deaths are higher than ever before. They reach this conclusion by bizarrely including the deaths from COVID in the catastrophes. Remember, COVID killed more people just in 2020 than all the world’s other catastrophes in the past half century.

Lumping these in with deaths from hurricanes and floods inappropriately seems designed to create headlines rather than understanding, especially when the agency is using the findings to argue for an acceleration of climate action.

The truth is that deaths from climate disasters have fallen dramatically because wealthier countries are much better at protecting citizens. Research shows this phenomenon consistently across almost all catastrophes, including storms, floods, cold and heat waves.

This matters because by the end of this century there will be more people in harm’s way, and climate change will mean sea levels rise several feet.

One comprehensive study shows that at the beginning of the 21st century, around 3.4 million people experienced coastal flooding each year, causing $11 billion in annual damages. About $13 billion, or 0.05 percent, of global GDP was spent on coastal defenses.

If we do nothing and just keep coastal defenses as they are today, vast areas of the planet will be routinely inundated by 2100, with 187 million people flooded and damage worth $55 trillion annually. That’s more than 5 percent of global GDP.

But we will obviously adapt, especially because the cost is so low. That means fewer people than ever will be flooded by 2100. Even the combined cost of adaptation and climate damages will decrease to just 0.008 percent of GDP.

These facts show why it’s important that organizations like the United Nations deliver us the real picture on disasters. The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has bad form for making unfounded claims. Instead of headline-chasing with dodgy math and frightening language, the U.N. should do better — and it should be focused on championing the importance of innovation and adaptation to save more lives.

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