(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Biden administration is planning to spend copious amounts of tax dollars for troops of Greta Thunberg clones to spread climate alarmism, while rooting out new green-energy boondoggles ripe for additional funding.
In a bureaucratic loop of spending, the U.S. Agency for International Development has budgeted $150 billion to indoctrinate budding climate activists in developing countries, while simultaneously conceding that an increasing number of young people suffer from “climate-related mental conditions,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
One solution to fighting the stress and mental unease over what USAID paints as the catastrophic consequences of climate change, of course, is to spend more money on programs to help ease the angst that they’re creating.
USAID aims to confront the “growing importance” of young people suffering from “eco-anxiety.” That would include what the American Psychology Association described as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change.” As such, USAID is looking to spend billions of dollars “supporting programs at scale that address these issues.”
The overall goal of USAID’s 2022-2030 “Climate Strategy” is to create an “unprecedented ‘whole-of-Agency’ approach” to “work on the ground with partner governments and local actors to set the global trajectory toward our vision of a resilient, prosperous, and equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
To that end, Biden officials are pushing “behavior change and communications campaigns” that “encourage youth’s active participation” as they “have emerged in recent years as key actors … in demanding government action to tackle the climate crisis.”
Agency officials claimed that starts with “Promoting safe, secure, and enabling political environment at all levels of governance for Indigenous Peoples, human rights and environmental defenders, and local communities to participate in climate actions.”
Policy analysts contend those “climate actions” are ultimately counter-productive to the developing nations USAID purports to help. Pushing and mandating a move to green energy “punishes the developing world by refusing them to have what we have, which is the prosperity that comes from fossil fuels,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Free Beacon.
“It’s just horrifying to think we spend tax dollars, giving it to poor countries, to create more Greta Thunbergs,” Turner said. “There’s nothing charitable about that—if anything, it’s the epitome of first world privilege.”
This isn’t the first time USAID has come under fire for funding questionable projects and agendas of suspect motive. The agency forked over nearly $5 million in 2021 to the Anthony Fauci-linked EcoHealth Alliance, despite widespread concerns that the group was reportedly involved with gain-of-function and virus research at China’s Wuhan lab, where growing evidence indicates the COVID pandemic originated.