(Un)Clean Development Mechanisms, Carbon Offsets,.. and the City money jugglers

Lord Patel remembers Ginny Buckley in the late 70's as an 8 year old gap-toothed chatterbox - transformed now into a slim svelte, 42 year old Mum who fronted an asinine quasi travel/Money /Green program on BBC2 Wednesday, 24 January 2007 at 21:00 GMT on BBC Two. - Should I Really Give Up Flying? about the current "debate" about the contribution of jetliners and their cargoes of thoughless and hedonistic holidaymakers.

This program consisted of vacuous stilted scripted conversation between the voluptuous Ginny in skin tight black jeans, revealing shirtwaister and some neat tricks with a scarf, moodily shot (Paris. Texas - asif ?) on some downtown rail tracks or in St Marks Square with the vapid Max Flint, who will soon take up shaving.

This programs was says the BBC ...

An examination of air tourism and its impact on the environment, to help viewers make up their minds about their own flying habits. Presenters Ginny Buckley and Max Flint reveal the effects of climate change on some of the world's favourite destinations and explore the impact that the explosion in budget airlines both in Europe and India could have on the environment. The programme also visits beneficiaries of offsetting from the Mersey Forest to the Masai Mara.

What we got was what could have been library shots of "Where I would like to go for my Holidays" with a totally uncritical , uninformed race through the benfits of tiny solar powered lights to an Indian village, a very sparky and savvy Kenyan teacher who had a mobile phone network re-charged by batteries, charged by hugely expensive solar power - which could easily have been done with readily and widely available hand cranked Taiwan made mobile phone charging devices.

It also included the absurd Brian Blessed saying how wonderful Doncaster (the epicentre of Labour Party Local Government corruption) airport was and the loothsome grinning pullover

Lord Virgin of Grope explaining how he was going to use biofuels to power his planes - which the excellent ex school colleague of Lord Patel, anti airport campaigner (he lives near Manchester
Airport) Geoff Gazzard , explained was nonsense as biofuels freeze at minus 3/4 degrees and even the bearded wonder's planes fly at temperatures of minus 40 degrees.

A supreme example of how inane, lightweight, visually unexciting and verbally apalling BBC TV programmes can be.

Now Channel 4 are at it this week (Wednesday 7th) with a really incisive incisive view about the corrupt, futile, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), carbon offsets and the ETS. (also Part 2 scheduled for Thursday -today but it didn't)

The excellent Tom Clarke has foundand publishes the details of some CDM carbon trading
schemes rich countries pay into, may not be adding to global cuts in emissions and may in fact
may, in fact, be damaging the local environment. He has found that currently Indian CDM plans
approved and in the process of approval would amount to companies receiving £1 -2.5Mn across 290 known schemes.

He raises first the case of Sri Bajrang & ISPAT in the Chantisgar state who have been served
notice by the State regulator - which they deby that they are not judged to be sustainable.

Further south in Karnataka he looks at the OP Jindal Group who have benefited by Euros 20 Mn. and whom Sunita Narain of the Centre for Economic Development claims that the rk undertaken was necessary and provides little environmental benefit for the local economy and area - again stoutly rejected by the company.

All the time these payments from the prosperous North are referred to as Investments. They are nothing of the kind, they are merely ;

1. A license to continue pollution
2. They are effectively a modern version of the mediaeval sale of indulgences, where a priest would undertake prayers (at a cost) to allow the sinner to continue their wayward life. January 27, 1343, that Pope Clement VI issued a bull, Unigenitus, officially reaffirming that the Catholic Church can grant remission of sin through indulgences.
3. They allow the erection of the market to trade in these "carbon credits" which become pari passu with the ETS units under the EU cap scheme with all it's derivatives and sparkly financial mumbo jumbo of commodities markets.
4. Ultimately these rigged markets allow the leaching (leeching) of pension funds either directly
or via "Hedge funds" and similiar corporate (and barely legal) quasi stick up gangsters.

One thing the CDM scheme and carbon credits do not do, is reduce the production of CO2, and other myriad attendant pollutants - PCB's , Dioxins, sulphur, toxic heavy metals and especially fine particulates.

The whole CDM circus also deflects critical attention on the production and pollution in the developed world and the respiratory epidemics, skin ailments, actions of oestrogen mimetics and many, as yet unknown consequences that follow unbridled pollution - whilst at the same time allowing the polluters to claim how hard they are working at providing a sustainable world ...simultaneously helping the 3rd world.

Wonderful how things haunt you .. poor old Larry Summers Ex World Bank, Ex Dean of Harvard famously endorsed a memo in 1991 from Lant Pritchett which was alleged to be "ironic". It advanced an economic argument for the dumping of pollution from First World countries in the territory of 3rd World countries.

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

Read the rest here ....

Tommorrows reading will be from "Carbon Trading" .. a critical conversation on climate change ..Dag Hammarskold Centre. Sept. 2006 . Chapter 4 Page 219 et seq. Offsets - 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 dispossess ordinary people of their land, water, air - and future.

BBC Five Live did a program (40 mins) by Matthew Chapman (Sunday 29 October at 1100 GMT ) which you can hear by clicking the link.... learn what happens when you "carbon offset" your air travel.

A report about the program is available at BBC Online .

Learn how

Money pledged by the UK to make up for the pollution caused by the world leaders flying to last years G8 summit in Gleneagles hosted by Tony Blair to help a Cape Town township cut energy costs by installing low energy light bulbs, is paying for bureaucrats and accountants, BBC's Five Live Report has found out. (This was, bragged TB a G8 "Carbon neutral" summit)

An independent body, South South North, involved in the project, calculated it would raise £37,000 from the sale of carbon rights for re-investment in the poverty stricken township.

Result ? Hiring auditors to meet needs of the CDM mechanism (KPMG) in the way demanded by CDM, cost £54,000, leaving Cape Town council in debt to the tune of £17,000.

Learn how ;

The Carbon Neutral Company Ltd., (originally known as re-Leaf Britain Limited 1995 , Forests for the Future Ltd 1996 and Future Forests Ltd 2005, ) one of 2 favoured by the Gubment (the other is Climate Care Ltd of Oxford , previously Co2 Management Ltd., 2003, CST Management Ltd., 2000- they are now a subsidiary of Co2.org - Climate Care is the trading name of Climate Care Trust Limited. who confusingly pays a fixed royalty of 10% of annual turnover to Climate Care Ltd) hasn't produced any accounts beyond June 2005, (i.e accounts are due) and will sell you a right to carbon which will squester in trees that were planted before they got involved and whose lifetime will be determined by the owners - who might be The Government Agency the Highlands and Islands Enterprise Council.

The Carbon Neutral Company Ltd., principal shareholders their website reports, are , Zouk Ventures (whose website deescribes them as a a London-based venture capital firm) who manage $100 million in two technology funds and owns investments in Finland, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Triodos Bank is an independent bank investing in enterprises creating social, environmental or cultural added value - for example they sponsored the Soil Association Annual Conference January 2007 - ‘One Planet Agriculture’ at the Cardiff International Area.

Confused ? You will be. In the fantasy world of CDM and Carbon offsets.