You couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried.

Bungling World Bank bureaucrats lost track of at least $24 billion bankrolling the battle against climate change, according to a bombshell report by a left-leaning charity group.

An investigation by Oxfam revealed “poor record-keeping practices” by the DC-based international lender that resulted in anywhere between $24 billion and $41 billion in misplaced funds.

The agency’s audit showed “a lack of traceable spending” over the past seven years — partly because of an oddball accounting practice in which the bank accounts for its climate financing at the time of a project’s approval rather than at the time of project completion, according to the report released last week.

Worst of all, there is no definitive public record indicating where this money was allocated or how it was utilized, making it impossible to evaluate the effects of the loss. However, to their credit, the agency did conduct an investigation and released the results.

It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.

“The Bank is quick to brag about its climate finance billions —but these numbers are based on what it plans to spend, not on what it actually spends once a project gets rolling,” said Kate Donald, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington D.C. Office. “This is like asking your doctor to assess your diet only by looking at your grocery list, without ever checking what actually ends up in your fridge.”

The Bank is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, accounting for 52 percent of the total flow from all multilateral development banks combined.

The issue of climate finance will take center stage at this year’s COP in Azerbaijan, where countries are set to negotiate a new global climate finance goal, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG).

Climate activists are demanding the Global North provide at least $5 trillion a year in public finance to the Global South “as a down payment towards their climate debt” to the countries, people and communities of the Global South who are the least responsible for climate breakdown but are the most affected.

Oxfam warns that the lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture.

Established in 1944, this international financial institution is part of the United Nations system and initially concentrated on post-war reconstruction in Europe.

However, misguided climate crisis policies are now redirecting resources away from Europe and undermining the region’s prosperity.

The Earth’s climate is constantly evolving, and it always will. While organizations like the World Bank may have acted as trustworthy entities in the past, both it and the United Nations have now become corrupted, masquerading as do-gooders.

If so much money and resources wasn’t being wasted on a nonexistent crisis, there might be more available for other initiatives that could genuinely benefit mankind.

PHOTO CREDIT: World Bank Building, Washington D.C. By ajay_suresh – The World Bank Group, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150187185