Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave a speech in Belem, Brazil yesterday after attending the G20 summit in Rio. She had some bad news for everyone. Transitioning to a "carbon-neutral" footing has to remain the highest priority for every country, including the United States. But reaching that net-zero goal isn't going to be easy and it's not going to be cheap. She claimed that the fight against climate change would require an extra investment of three trillion (with a "T") dollars per year until at least 2050 globally. But she then turned around and described climate change as "the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century." We have apparently reached the point where climate change alarmists can say things like this with a straight face and simply expect everyone to nod along in agreement. (Reuters)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday that the global transition to a low-carbon economy requires $3 trillion in new capital each year through 2050, far above current annual financing, but that filling the gap is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

Yellen said in Belem, Brazil's Amazon gateway city, that reaching net-zero emissions goals remained a top priority for the Biden-Harris administration and this would require leadership far beyond U.S. borders.

"Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is bad economic policy," Yellen said in a speech after attending a G20 finance leaders meeting on Thursday and Friday in Rio de Janeiro.

She actually said we would need an additional three trillion dollars per year more than we're already spending. And where does she suppose that much money would be coming from? You already know the answer without waiting for me to tell you. The United States would be expected to shoulder the lion's share of the burden because we wind up paying for almost all of this madness. There are only seven countries on the entire planet with a domestic GDP of more than three trillion. She is clearly just yanking numbers out of thin air at this point.

That was an amazing pivot that Yellen made from there, moving to describe climate change as a huge "economic opportunity." Of course, it really is a massive economic opportunity if you happen to own or have stock in one of the many "green energy" companies that have been cropping up. It's also a wonderful opportunity for China and any other nations that are sitting on the largest stockpiles of rare-earth metals needed to build all of the batteries required to drive all of this nonsense. But for everyone else, it's a massive, pointless money sink. 

Yellen really should know better. Unlike most of Joe Biden's DEI appointments, Yellen did at least obtain a degree in economics and previously served as the Chair of the Fed. She's supposed to know how money and investments in general work. We're already investing a simply stupid amount of money into all of this climate change alarmism and all we're getting as a return on those investments is higher energy prices and a more unstable energy grid. Meanwhile, some of the biggest carbon emitters in the world get off nearly scott-free because they are defined as "developing nations." America winds up footing the bill so the joke is on us, but it's not particularly funny.

If you're really all that concerned about lowering the temperature, we already know how to do that and I will keep repeating it until I'm blue in the face. Plant a trillion trees. Trees lower the temperature around them, suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and generate oxygen in exchange. And they do it all for free. But the green energy crowd hates the idea because trees don't make you much money unless and until you cut them down for timber. The fact that this administration ignores the idea of replanting the forests while panhandling for another three trillion dollars per year really tells you all you need to know about them.