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Snouts in the trough in Carbon Trading Schemes

David Spratt: Powerful working towards climate talks disaster Green Left David Spratt 11 November 2009 “…..The carbon trading and financial transfers systems — established at Kyoto at the insistence of the US delegation led by Al Gore — and including the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — worry many people because they act like the sale of indulgences by the medieval church, absolving the buyers for their immoral actions.

But the Europe/US bloc has put carbon trading at the core of its emissions reduction strategy, while the two largest emitters of carbon outside the developed world, China and India, are the main beneficiaries of CDM financing.Yet in November 2008, the US Government Accounting Office (GAO) found that emissions trading had failed to accomplish its basic objective.
It said, “the use of carbon offsets in a cap-and-trade system can undermine the system’s integrity, given that it is not possible to ensure that every credit represents a real, measurable, and long-term reduction in emissions”It also said, “while proposed reforms may significantly improve the CDM’s effectiveness, carbon offsets involve fundamental trade-offs and may not be a reliable long-term approach to climate change mitigation.”

In other words, there are a lot of snouts in the trough that cannot be budged.The GAO report goes to the heart of the matter: carbon offsets and long-term emission reduction strategies may simply be incompatible.If further evidence is required, consider that Australia is pushing to redefine the CDM to include so-called “clean coal” carbon storage and sequestration and “efficient” coal-fired power stations.Other nations like Japan have tried to promote nuclear power as a “clean” technology as a way of diverting funds to prop up their failing nuclear industry.

Green Left – David Spratt: Powerful working towards climate talks disaster

November 9, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, climate change | climate change, renewables, solar