media lens - distorted visions corrected - at last

media lens is a website.

It claims to correct the distorted vision of the corporate media. It's a haven for humourless, muddle aged, muddle class, muddle brow media shit stirrers. These dysfunctional mutual back slappers maintain a cautious and Buddhist inspired and untroubled resevoir of careful comment - that spends endless time berating the BBC , Independent and Guradian Newsdesks over arcane points of textual analysis. They must absolutely fucking hate them.

About us, outs their tedious philosophy by their juvenile and unformed and uninformed ideas of which they say revealingly ..."We have to acknowledge the debt we owe to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, and in particular to their brilliant (and largely ignored) text, 'Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media'. (Pantheon, 1988) " ... you can just smell those socks and sandals and hear the scratchy Santana albums.

In truly Damascean fashion they have however finally understood that the whole post Kyoto scaremongering and deployment of the insane emissions trading scheme is a capitalist scam, perpetrated by capitalist scum.

The revelation .... "New Book Exposes Scandal of Carbon Trading" they belatedly recognise .. this is the unhandy sized "Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power" a product of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.Which they ca;; their Development Dialogue 2006:September, no.48

You can download (PDF alert) the whole 350 odd pages or (recommended) 6 seperate chapters. OR better still obtain a free copy by e-mailing Kajsajsa.overgaard@dhf.uu.se or (in Britain only) larrylohmann@gn.apc.org or secretariat@dhf.uu.se or Fax: +46-18-12 20 72

This is how they outline the plot in an arch and quaint fashion but does give you an idea of the content - read and judge for yourself.

Chapter 1 A new fossil fuel crisis
In which the growing climate crisis is traced mainly to the mining of coal, oil and gas; the dangers to survival and livelihood are outlined; the political nature and implications of the problem explored; and reasonable and unreasonable solutions sketched.

Chapter 2 ‘Made in the USA’
A short history of carbon trading In which the surprising story is told of how corporations, academics, governments, United Nations agencies and environmentalists united around a neoliberal or ‘market’ approach to climate change emanating from North America.

Chapter 3 Lessons unlearned
In which carbon trading, contrary to slogans about the universal eff ectiveness of markets in dealing with environmental and social problems, is shown to be ill-suited to addressing climate change. The experience of the US in pollution trading is demonstrated to be an argument not for, but rather against, making carbon markets the centrepiece of action on global warming.

Chapter 4 Off sets
The fossil economy’s new arena of conflict In which it is shown how projects designed to compensate’ for continued fossil fuel use are helping to dispossess ordinary people of their land, water, air – and futures.

Chapter 5 Ways forward
In which the claim that ‘there is no alternative’ to carbon trading is dissected and set aside, and emerging alliances for a more democratic and effective climate politics are explored.

Pollution trading the authors have belatedly recognised is a completely new idea, foisted on the world by a small circle of neoliberal institutions in the US. Surprise - Surprise !! Pollution trading’s main appeal is that it promises to save make money for the rich over the short term. As a pollution control policy, it is sure to fail.

.... ahem .. in Europe where it HAS been tried ...it has FAILED ... the ETS market closed on Friday at just 6 Euros, the lowest ever....having made a lot of traders, lawyers, accountants, banks very rich on the way and many credulous investors much poorer.

All credit to media lens for finally realising what twats they have been all these years as the wool has been ever so gently pulled over their eyes... quite how difficult is it to deprive children of their candy ?

Pssssst.... want to stop somebody doing something? - tax and regulate, admittedly it has limited itility eg. European fuel taxes cf USA ... but of course it depends what you do with the taxes you raise.. the European Gubments just piss them up against the wall.

Anyway read the report - 350 pages but it's big type on artfully landscaped pages and the text boxes a la US textbooks makes reading easier ... the Bibliography is excellent.

Thanks to the two Daves .. welcome to the real world.

See also ....See also "Obscenity' of carbon trading" by Kevin Smith in the BBC Green Room , he is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute which studies the impacts of carbon trading on society and the environment.

Also by him "Stern Words While in Europe They are trading Hot air" also at (www.thepolitician.org)

"Labour MP Gerry Steinberg described the scheme as a ‘mockery’ and an ‘outrageous waste of public money’."

"A massively generous allocation resulted in windfall profits for some of the UK’s most polluting companies, to the collective value of £940 million according to Franck Schuttelar, an analyst at the energy-trading firm Gaselys."

"Waiting yet more years to learn further lessons from the next round of ineffective emissions trading is a luxury we don’t have."

See also his "Carbon Cop outs" - He is also co-author of The Carbon Neutral Myth: offset indulgences for your climate sins, forthcoming in January 2007.

See also Climate Fraud and Carbon Colonialism: The New Trade in Greenhouse Gases (pdf alert)by Heidi Bachram CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 15 NUMBER4 (DECEMBER 2004)

"The changes necessary to avert climate catastrophe are simple enough, namely, a switch away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy like solar and wind, along with a reduction in energy use generally."

SinksWatch is an initiative to track and scrutinize carbon sink projects that has useful information on CDM project scams.