When the #GreenClimateFund was being established, Australia's Prime Minister was #TonyAbbott, a #ClimateDenier, who had won the 2013 federal election promising to dismantle the baby steps towards a #ClimatePolicy the previous #Labor government had made.
So there was little surprise when PM Abbott announced in Nov 2013 that #Australia would be contributing a massive sum of $0 to the Green Climate Fund.
At the time, he claimed Australia would chip in AU$200m (then =USD$187m) over four years, but since this was merely a rebranding of existing #ForeignAid, it clearly didn't count as "new and additional funding", a fact that most journalists blithely ignored, falling for the bait-and-switch. Or we might say instead that the Australian government was overstating its foreign aid commitments by $200m over those years.
Nonetheless, the four years were soon gone, as was Tony Abbott, as well as his successor #MalcolmTurnbull, who in turn had been replaced as PM by #ScottMorrison. When it came time to pledge again in 2018, Morrison announced Australia would be pulling out of the Green Climate Fund entirely, a path also taken by the #Trump administration at the time, whom Morrison was often cribbing notes from when it came to what kinds of #cruelty and #selfishness he could get away with.
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