Couldn’t PBS hold a telethon fundraiser if they were so concerned?
How the loss of USAID funding affects Indonesia’s ability to fight climate change
The ripple effects of the Trump administration’s elimination of USAID are being felt in dozens of countries where the agency supported initiatives ranging from public health programs to infrastructure and climate resilience projects. Angeles Ponpa from Northwestern University’s school of journalism traveled to Indonesia to see the effect on one of the world’s fastest-sinking cities.
Wait, she traveled all the way to Indonesia on a fossil fueled jet to yammer about ‘climate change’? Just to be clear, this is from a TV episode where there is a transcript
Angeles Ponpa: Outside the capital Jakarta and the Tanah Merah neighborhood, residents struggled for years to get access to clean water.
In 2016, USAID offered a program, IUWASH, that helped disadvantaged families obtain clean water.
OK, but, first, that has nothing to do with ‘climate change’, 2nd, why can’t the Indonesian government do it, especially when Americans have their own problems?
Decades of groundwater extraction have caused Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia to sink.
Meanwhile, with climate change, the seas are rising, making flooding worse and sending salty water into groundwater.
They failed to note how much the seas are rising. Or that there are serious tectonic forces along Indonesia. Or that they screwed themselves. Or how much of the money flowing from USAID through NGOs was siphoned off.
Angeles Ponpa: Jeff Cohen was USAID’s most recent mission director in Indonesia. He says the decision by the Trump administration to cut USAID funding will have dire consequences.
Jeff Cohen: Without USAID’s funding there, all the communities where we’re working are either going to have to do it on their own or find somebody else to be that catalyst. And honestly, some of them never will get access to clean drinking water, will never get access to safe sanitation until somebody replaces us. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.
You know, there might be a case if USAID was actually helping, instead of only delivering about 12% of the funds for the projects. Tell you what, let’s do a complete and full audit, utterly open, of how the money was spent. Where it went, who go it. What NGOs pocketed a ton of moola while delivering little aid. USAID had a ton of unnecessary programs wasting taxpayer money, so, the wackos screwed programs that actually helped (but should have been funded by foreign governments, not the US government). They ruined the whole thing themselves.
Oh, and giving people water wouldn’t actually fight ‘climate change’, if it existed.
During discussions on environmental sustainability, Ashley Kitisya, Laudato Si’ Movement’s Africa Program Manager, said that during Advent faiths were looking at Christmas giving through the lens of the three planetary crises.
One baby Jesus lies in a manger in the snow, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket with his wrists zip-tied. Mary stands nearby outside the Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, wearing a plastic gas mask and flanked by Roman soldiers in tactical vests labeled “ICE.”
If you ask Lisa Angevine-Bergs, she’ll tell you that Richard Cowles and his team are “going to save Christmas.”
