Three cheers for House efforts to defund climate-related foreign aid

House Republicans should be applauded for introducing an FY 2025 State Department appropriations bill that blocks climate change-related foreign aid.  

Specifically, the bill wouldn’t allow spending to implement the United Nations’s (UN) 2015 Paris Agreement, nor UN programs like the Green Climate Fund, Clean Technology Fund, and Loss and Damage Fund. 

The bill would also stop funding for implementation of Biden administration executive orders and guidance on climate change. It specifically names “Executive Order 14008 (relating to Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad), including the memorandum entitled Guidance on Fossil Fuel Energy at the Multilateral Development Banks, issued by the Department of the Treasury on August 16, 2021.”

There are multiple reasons why Congress should steer clear of an international climate policy spending spree. These include strong doubts about the seriousness of climate change relative to other international issues, as well as concerns about the threat to American interests posed by the Paris Agreement. And, of course, there is the pervasive fraud and waste seen in nearly every foreign aid program, climate or otherwise.

Perhaps most important of all, the bill’s authors are on solid ground for why Congress should refrain from spending on climate programs that were not enacted into law.

Most notably, the Paris Agreement has never been submitted to the Senate for the Constitutionally required two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Congress shouldn’t simply pretend that this treaty has been ratified and start spending tax dollars on it. Ditto the UN climate foreign aid programs, as well as the wish lists contained in Biden administration executive orders and guidance.

There’s a reason none of this stuff has been enacted – it doesn’t have the votes. The American people, through their elected representatives, recognize that the climate agenda is all economic pain for scant environmental gain, and that the international climate agenda is an even bigger boondoggle for taxpayers.  

Spending on the unratified Paris Agreement and other extra-legal climate programs should clearly be a non-starter. For these reasons, the House appropriations bill is spot on.