World Bank Climate Denier Steps Down and Biden Regulates Power Plants

Here's what happened last week.

A wind farm in Tunisia. Photo by Anastasia Palagutina

World Bank leader who doesn’t think fossil fuels cause climate change is stepping down

As The New York Times reports:

David Malpass, the embattled president of the World Bank, said on Wednesday that he would step down by June, roughly a year before his term expires.

Mr. Malpass, who was nominated in 2019 for a five-year term by President Donald J. Trump, has overseen an organization that lends billions of dollars each year to poor countries grappling with health crises, hunger, conflict and a warming planet.

But last September he came under fire for his own views on climate change. When asked if he accepted the overwhelming scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels was causing global temperatures to rise, he demurred. “I’m not a scientist,” he said.

In recent years, the World Bank has become an important source of energy transition financing. Between 2016 and 2021, the World Bank provided $109 billion in climate finance to developing nations.

But many climate activists think the organization isn’t doing enough to speed up the energy transition.

In 2019, the organization said it would stop financing upstream oil and gas projects. But a report published last fall found that the World Bank didn’t keep its promise and continues to fund gas projects in countries like Myanmar and Uzbekistan.

According to author and climate activist, Bill McKibben, the first task of the next World Bank president should be to stop funding fossil fuel projects. In addition to that, they should “figure out how to open the spigot of climate finance so that the nations of the global South can quickly build out renewable energy.”

Read more:

• World Bank has given nearly $15bn to fossil fuel projects since Paris deal

• Rockefeller Foundation boss favourite to succeed David Malpass at World Bank

• Halfway to a Happy Ending