At the heart of the agency’s climate strategy is a concern over increased energy consumption in developing nations, which USAID says will grow by 70 percent in the next three decades. In order to avoid the “longer-term emissions trajectories” that come with that energy consumption growth, the agency says it must promote green energy and elevate young climate activist voices in “emerging economies.” For Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, such a strategy “punishes the developing world by refusing them to have what we have, which is the prosperity that comes from fossil fuels.”

“It’s just horrifying to think we spend tax dollars, giving it to poor countries, to create more Greta Thunbergs,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “There’s nothing charitable about that—if anything, it’s the epitome of first world privilege.”

[It smells like the colonialism that progressives claim to loathe. — Ed]