|
Destructive effect of the carbon offset trade? |
|
|
The scam of global warming is that we pay others for our complacency. The most destructive effect of the carbon offset trade is that it allows us to believe we can carry on polluting.
George Monbiot writes in The Guardian:
"...a study published last week in Nature...showed, to everyone's astonishment, that plants produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Phillips used the findings to suggest that the entire science of global warming had been disproved and that there was no need to worry about the biosphere. Nature came to the opposite conclusion: as methane emissions from plants rise with temperature, climate change will cause further climate change.
"But while this study does nothing to threaten global warming theory, there is something it challenges. It should shake our confidence in one of our favourite means of tackling it: paying other people to clear up the mess we've made. Both through the unofficial carbon market and by means of a provision of the Kyoto protocol called the "clean development mechanism", people, companies and states can claim to reduce their emissions by investing in carbon friendly projects in poorer countries. Among other schemes, you can earn carbon credits by paying people to plant trees. As the trees grow, they are supposed to absorb the carbon we release when we burn fossil fuels.
"...what the new study provides is yet more evidence that the accountancy behind many of the "carbon offset" schemes is flawed...figures [are] speculative...an honest sum impossible."
"But perhaps the most destructive effect of the carbon offset trade is that it allows us to believe we can carry on polluting. The government can keep building roads and airports and we can keep flying to Thailand for our holidays, as long as we purchase absolution by giving a few quid to a tree-planting company. How do you quantify complacency? How do you know that the behaviour the trade induces does not cancel out the carbon it sequesters?
Read more at:
www.monbiot.com
|
Home 
Climate Change 
