Washington’s Blog reported on Friday that the UN and other agencies calling for a war on global warming say the price tag will be trillions.
But - according to top experts on climate and cap and trade - the regulatory framework being rammed through in America and attempted in Australia, won't actually reduce carbon to any meaningful degree!
The Copenhagen framework uses Enron-style accounting tricks to give the impression of cutting carbon, without really doing so
Remember Enron? A creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the "Enron scandal" and the biggest corporate collapse in US history up to that stage. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption.
The first week of the Copenhagen summit was dominated by the representatives of the rich countries, including Australia, trying to lace the deal with Enron-style accounting tricks that will give the impression of cuts, without the reality. It's essential to understand what happened last week, so we can understand the reality of the deal that will be announced with great fanfare this week.
A study by the University of Stanford found that most of the projects that are being funded as "cuts" either don't exist, don't work, or would have happened anyway. Yet this isn't a small side-dish to the deal: it's the main course!
Trick one: hot air. The nations of the world were allocated permits to release greenhouse gases back in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still a vast industrial power – so it was given a huge allocation. But the following year, it collapsed, and its industrial base went into freefall – along with its carbon emissions. It was never going to release those gases after all. But Russia and the eastern European countries have held on to these permits in all negotiations as "theirs". Now, they are selling them to rich countries who wish to purchase "cuts". Under the current system, the US can buy them from Romania and say they have cut emissions – even though they have not. Nice scam! Paid for by the American taxpayer who believes he/she is saving the planet!
We aren't talking about climatic small change. This hot air represents 10 gigatonnes of CO2. By comparison, if the entire developed world cuts its emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, that will only take six gigatonnes out of the atmosphere.
Trick two: double-counting. This is best understood through an example. If Britain pays China to abandon a coal power station and construct a hydro-electric dam instead, Britain pockets the reduction in carbon emissions as part of Britain’s overall national cuts. In return, Britain is allowed to keep a coal power station open at home. But at the same time, China also counts this change as part of its overall cuts. So one tonne of carbon cuts is counted twice. This means the whole system is riddled with exaggeration – and the figure for overall global cuts is a con.
Trick three: the fake forests ... the Canadian, Swedish and Finnish logging companies have successfully pressured their governments into inserting an absurd clause into the rules. The new rules say you can, in the name of "sustainable forest management", cut down almost all the trees – without losing credits. A felled forest doesn't increase your official emissions... even though it increases your actual emissions.
There are dozens more examples like this, but you and I would lapse into a coma if I listed them. This is deliberate. This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds. And the rich countries are flatly refusing to make even these enfeebled, leaky cuts legally binding. You can toss them in the bin the moment you leave the conference centre, and nobody will have any comeback.
http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com
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