[stop-imf] Reason 1 to Join IMF/Bank Protests - Global Warming

[Robert Weissman]

	WORLD BANK CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING 
	- THE WORLD BANK'S FOSSIL FUEL ADDICTION -

	REASON NO. 1 TO JOIN THE FALL PROTESTS 
	AGAINST THE IMF AND WORLD BANK

	SEE WWW.GLOBALIZETHIS.ORG FOR PROTEST DETAILS

Between 1992 and 1998, the World Bank Group funded $13.6 billion in oil,
gas and coal projects in developing countries. These fossil fuel
projects will eventually contribute a burden of carbon emissions (CO2)
to the Earth’s atmosphere greater than all current annual global fossil
fuel emissions. During this same period, the World Bank spent 25 times
more on climate-changing fossil fuels than on renewable power sources,
such as wind and solar energy. 

Plans for a 20% shift towards clean renewable energy were deleted from
final versions of the Bank’s 1999 Energy and Environment Strategy, in
spite of the express support of Vice President Al Gore and the Business
Council for Sustainable Energy (which includes Enron, Maytag, Honeywell
and Lockheed Martin). 

Roughly one-fifth of World Bank Group lending is devoted to increasing
energy and power supply in developing countries. The World Bank’s energy
lending portfolio is dominated by fossil fuels; more than three-fourths
of its lending is spent on oil, gas and coal or power projects. 

Each World Bank dollar paves the way for five or six dollars of
additional private investments in projects it supports. Though the Bank
has identified renewable energy as the most efficient, viable way of
meeting the energy needs of the world’s two billion rural poor, it is
ignoring climate-friendly options. Instead, it is locking developing
countries into a fossil fuel path. Thus, it is repeating the mistakes of
industrialized countries, rather than leap-frogging to newer cleaner
technologies. 

In countries such as China, which is projected to double its energy
consumption by 2020, the World Bank is ensuring that much of its future
power will come from coal, the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive of fossil
fuels. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the World Bank has steadily
increased its financing of coal-fired power plants in China. While the
World Bank’s recent $100 million loan for renewable energy in China is
encouraging, it pales next to the Bank’s multi-billion dollar lending
for fossil fuel projects. 

In other parts of the world, the World Bank is helping open up some of
the richest untapped oil and gas fields in regions ruled by repressive
regimes, where corruption leaves little hope that profits will trickle
down and where demands of poor citizens for fair compensation and
environmental clean-up are met with brutal reprisals. In June 2000, for
example, the World Bank approved a $200 million loan for the
Chad-Cameroon oil drilling and pipeline project. The main corporate
beneficiaries of this loan, ExxonMobil and Chevron, have been key
players in the effort to discredit the science of global warming and gut
the climate treaty. The Chad-Cameroon project is estimated to ultimately
contribute 446.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere. 


Excerpted from Hot Dividends: The World Bank’s Investments in Climate
Changing Fossil Fuels, by Friends of the Earth, the Institute for Policy
Studies/Sustainable Energy and Environment Network, and the Center for
International Environmental Law, full text at:
http://www.bicusa.org/ptoc/htm/foe_climate.htm

 	-- SEE WWW.GLOBALIZETHIS.ORG FOR PROTEST DETAILS --