Follow the Money, Honey!

Rajendra K. Pachauri

Jerome R. Corsi of WorldNetDailey reports a story emerging out of Britain suggests "follow the money" may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis.

A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.

I wonder how these workers now feel aboutBritian's headlong rush into the EU with the promises that all would be better off?

The Tata Group headquartered in Mumbai anticipates receiving windfall profits of up to nearly $2 billion US from closing the Corus Redcar steelmaking plant in Britain. About half of the savings are expected to result from cashing in on carbon credits granted the steelmaker by the European Union under the EU's emissions trading scheme, or ETS.

How crazy and destructive are these emissions trading schemes where some businesses will make obscene profits from ceasing production of an essential product? My take on economics is that to make a profit you have to produce either a product or a service that people are willing to pay for.

I wonder how many people will see where all the extra taxation they forked out to "save the planet" is going to?

Corus has accumulated 7.5 million European Union surplus carbon allowances, or EUAs, given the company free by the EU, after corporate officials lobbied EU officials aggressively in Brussels.

The Corus-owned 7.5 million EUAs are estimated at up to $650 million; the company also anticipates "saving" 6 million tons of carbon dioxide by closing the plant and not producing the plant's capacity of 3 million tons of steel. The 6 million tons of carbon dioxide is worth an estimated $130 million at current rates and possibly as much as $325 million at expected market levels.

How does the closing of a steelmaker in Britain tie to the chairman of the U.N.'s global warming science committee?

In 1974, the TATA Group provided the financial resources to found the Tata Energy Research Institute, or TERI, a policy organization headquartered in New Dehli, India, of which Pachauri has been chairman since the group was formed.

Continued business ties between TERI and TATA are demonstrated by a press announcement on the TERI website dated Feb. 4 in which Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for commerce and industry as well as minister of state for power, announced a joint venture with TERI and TATA power to extract and use carbon dioxide for the propagation of micro-algae.

On Dec. 10, 2007, Pachauri shared with Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. At the Nobel ceremonies, Pachauri in his Nobel lecture openly represented the U.N.'s IPCC.

The TATA Group decision to close the Corus steelmaking plant has caused the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown political difficulties. According to the London Times manufacturing accounted for 22.5 percent of Britain's economic output when Labour came to power in 1997, while it accounts for little more than 11 percent today.