Exposing the Waste in Climate Solutions
The report “Funding Failure” from Oil Change International pushes the familiar narrative that financial institutions are betraying climate goals by continuing to fund fossil fuel projects.
It highlights the billions of dollars that banks funnel into the fossil fuel industry, suggesting that this funding undermines efforts to combat climate change.
However, this narrative crumbles when you examine the broader context and the actual spending priorities.
In 2023, global banks provided around $700 billion in financing to the fossil fuel sector. While this might sound like a staggering figure, it’s relatively modest when compared to the U.S. defense budget, which exceeded $850 billion in the same year.
This comparison reveals that fossil fuel financing, far from being the primary obstacle to addressing climate change, is dwarfed by other spending priorities. U.S. healthcare spending was approximately $4.3 trillion in 2022—again, a figure that puts the fossil fuel financing into perspective.
Even social programs, with the U.S. spending over $1.2 trillion on Social Security alone in 2023, dwarf the financial flows for global fossil fuels.
When you consider these numbers, the obsession with fossil fuel divestment starts to seem less like a rational policy and more like an ideological crusade.
This misplaced priority is further highlighted when we examine the wasteful spending on so-called “climate solutions” that are both unproven and impractical.
The report sheds light on this issue, revealing that an astonishing $2 trillion has been poured into unproven climate technologies.
These include the much-touted carbon capture and storage (CCS) and fossil hydrogen (also known as blue hydrogen), both of which are emblematic of the broader waste and inefficiency that plague the current climate policy landscape.
Carbon capture involves capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources like power plants or industrial facilities before they enter the atmosphere.
The captured CO2 is then stored underground or used in other processes. Despite the hype, this technology is expensive, energy-intensive, and has yet to prove scalable or economically viable.
The irony is that while trillions are spent trying to capture CO2 from fossil fuels, the world continues to rely on these same fossil fuels for energy, and CCS does little to change that reality.
Fossil hydrogen, often called “blue hydrogen,” is another so-called solution. It’s produced by reforming natural gas, which generates CO2 as a byproduct.
The idea is to use carbon capture technology to capture this CO2, but as with carbon capture, the process is costly and inefficient.
The push for fossil hydrogen as a “clean” fuel is questionable, especially when the production process itself is heavily reliant on fossil fuels and the carbon capture required to make it viable adds further to the overall expense and complexity.
The report points out that this $2 trillion could have been better spent on more immediate and practical solutions to reduce pollution.
Instead, it’s been wasted on unproven technologies that may never deliver on their promises. This obsession with carbon—whether through carbon capture, fossil hydrogen, or other speculative technologies—has led to a gross misallocation of resources.
Instead of focusing on practical, scalable solutions that address pressing environmental problems, we are wasting time and money on expensive technologies that offer little more than false hope.
The fixation on carbon is symptomatic of a broader issue within the climate policy sphere—an irrational fear that drives us to pursue costly and ineffective solutions while ignoring the practical realities of global energy needs.
The $700 billion in fossil fuel financing that the Oil Change International report criticizes is, in reality, a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions being squandered on unproven climate technologies.
In conclusion, while the report “Funding Failure” correctly highlights the massive waste associated with so-called climate solutions, it fundamentally misses the mark by assuming that these efforts are necessary in the first place.
As I’ve demonstrated multiple times, the surface temperature of our planet is relatively insensitive to GHG concentrations, calling into question the entire premise of drastic emissions reductions.
The report criticizes $700 billion in fossil fuel financing, but this figure is trivial compared to the trillions being wasted on unproven technologies like carbon capture and fossil hydrogen—technologies that offer little more than false hope while ignoring the practical realities of global energy needs.
This misplaced fixation on carbon is not about protecting the planet but about advancing an agenda that prioritizes ideological purity over practical solutions.
Instead of squandering resources on expensive and inefficient technologies, we should be focusing on more immediate and practical solutions that address genuine environmental concerns.
It’s time to reassess our approach to climate policy and ensure it’s grounded in reality, not driven by irrational fear.
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