Trump wants the Green Climate Fund to spend money on more coal plants (?!?)

Instead of using the Green Climate Fund for its purpose, which is to foster renewable energy growth in developing countries, Trump wants the fund to build more coal-fired power plants across the globe. (Face, meet palm.) In the Obama era, the United States donated $1 billion to the international fund, a critical move in winning support for the Paris climate agreement. Our current president, however, vowed to cut off our contributions when he announced in June his plans to withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement. A White House official now says the United States wants to prod developing countries to build “high-efficiency plants” that produce slightly lower carbon dioxide emissions than dirty old coal plants. As an energy source, coal generates the highest amount of carbon pollution, and new coal-burning electric plants are a poor financial investment given the declining costs of renewables around the world. Spending money intended to help nations especially vulnerable to climate change, such as Pacific Island communities that are slowly slipping beneath the sea, on more fossil fuel plants struck one commentator as “taking the fire department’s budget and using it to pour gasoline on the blaze.”