European Union to fork over $10 billion for Climate Change

One of the wrong impressions that climate change 'sceptics' generally have about the whole global warming scam is that it is partly designed to hold poor countries back. Personally, I wish that was the case-hey, I'm all for staying on top for as long as possible, and there is no better way to doing that than holding back your competition. Unfortunately, a lot of the measures ostensibly designed to fight Climate Change will just accelerate the transfer of wealth from the West to the developing world. This latest news is just one example of what I fear will be a long series of misguided measures the effects of which will be not so much to save the planet as to take money out of our pockets and put it in other people's pockets. After all, what's a few trillion dollars when you're saving the world?

EU leaders have agreed to pay 7.2bn euros (£6.5bn; $10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

Announcing the deal, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said all 27 EU member nations would contribute and that the EU was doing its "fair share".

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the UK's promise, at £500m ($800m; 553m euros) a year was the highest.

I doubt $800 million is going to affect the climate of the planet much, but I'm sure it's going to affect the living standards of a few people who are intimately involved in the deal.

Speaking at the end of the two-day EU summit in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was confident the agreement could kick-start the final negotiations in Denmark.

But BBC environment correspondent Richard Black says that although EU leaders believe they have a credible finance proposal, it is by no means certain that all developing countries will see it as enough, even if the EU figures are matched by countries such as Japan and the US.

So let me get this straight, the fear is that developing countries will find the gift of $10 billion too small and reject it? So how will that message be relayed?

"We're sorry, but $10 billion over three years is not good enough. Unless you give us $10 billion every year we have no choice but to reject your offer of free money."

Yeah, that makes about as much sense as anthropomorphic global warming.

Bruno Tseliso Sekoli, chairman of the Least Developed Countries bloc, told the BBC that the money being pledged was not enough.

"Any money that would flow from the developed to developing worlds would be welcome but these numbers are very, very low," he said.

Well of course he's going to say that. Haggling is how they do things in the third world