Slashdot Mirror
Countries Gaming Carbon Offsets May Have Dramatically Increased Emissions
schwit1 writes: Abuse of the carbon offset system may have caused emissions to increase by as much as 600 million tons. That's the finding of a new report from the Stockholm Environment Institute, which investigated carbon credits used to offset greenhouse gas emissions under a UN scheme. As one of the co-authors of the report put it, issuing these credits "was like printing money." From the article: "In some projects, chemicals known to warm the climate were created and then destroyed to claim cash. As a result of political horse trading at UN negotiations on climate change, countries like Russia and the Ukraine were allowed to create carbon credits from activities like curbing coal waste fires, or restricting gas emissions from petroleum production. Under the UN scheme, called Joint Implementation, they then were able to sell those credits to the European Union's carbon market. Companies bought the offsets rather than making their own more expensive, emissions cuts. But [the studey] says the vast majority of Russian and Ukrainian credits were in fact, "hot air" — no actual emissions were reduced.
It's a market. Which means you are guaranteed that people will game the market for their own ends.
Like all markets, as soon as it exists, someone comes along and says "how can I exploit this for my own profit", and then proceeds to do just that.
And then you'll get cartels forming to do even more of it. Because humans are greedy and dishonest as group. And have figured out that ion groups they can be even more greedy and dishonest.
If anybody didn't see this coming with this kind of thing, they're hopelessly naive. When they brought this in people were saying this is exactly what would happen.
Here's a little rule: All systems which assume humans won't be greedy selfish bastards who will cheat and manipulate the system for their own gain, are systems which are doomed to fail because they stupidly ignore human nature.
That covers all ism's ... economic, political, religious ... if your ism says "at their core humans are nice and friendly and play by the rules" ... your ism is full of crap.
This was doomed to have this outcome from the very beginning.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Russia and Ukraine, engaging in financial and environmental fraud? That's unpossible.
"Companies make money creating a product that no one checks to make sure it's not bogus"
In this case, carbon credits are mandated for a product that literally doesn't exist: CO2 supposedly not emitted. Of course it's going to be a joke.
Yes, I'm sure the European governments involved are all blameless in this.
Who came up with this system again?
#DeleteChrome
Enron for one in case anyone is dumb enough to defend the concept. Don't be that guy. Let it die.
Also our increasingly chubby ex vice president. Happily from what I understand the 2008 credit crash killed most of his machinations.
If any of you are wondering why the wind went out of the sails of this issue... The "Bell" tolled for it and it went into the compost bin of history.
I am a big fan of environmental reform... I just want it to be REAL and EFFECTIVE... not a fucking scam to enrich assholes or get politicians elected.
If you care about your petty political parties more than the environment than you don't care about the environment in the first place.
Real change is going to involve china and india and all the other developing countries that are going to come right after them. One after the other. That is going to require a technological change. Not carbon credits. Just cold hard barrel of a loaded gun with the hammer cocked pressed against a temple... truth. This isn't something you solve by passing a law.
The problem was created by a technological change. Without coal and fossil fuel energy sources there would be no problem. The industrial revolution created a problem.
Technology can solve problems technology creates.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm shocked and amazed. I'm also sarcastic.
"Cash for Clunkers". It made the absolute most out the broken window fallacy. As long as pollution is profitable, there will always be plenty to spread around.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
you've actually got to enforce regulations to get them to work or people will defraud others
Pay attention. Over and over again we see government programs that shouldn't exist at all gamed by fraudsters, from welfare to education vouchers. Now you are shocked that this stupid corporate welfare is being gamed and abused? It was obvious that that was going to happen from the very start, and it should be obvious to you that the government never has a history of properly enforcing regulations to stop fraud. The policy is only to expend a tiny amount of effort to catch one or two offenders and "make an example" of them, but the others ignore this and continue collecting taxpayer money. You don't solve this problem by enforcing regulations, you solve this problem by not creating it in the first place, or admitting that it failed and shutting it down.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They did that in Alberta and got rid of rats entirely.
I think you're confusing the difference between Some People Lie and All People Lie.
Make a measurement that actually works, not one based on promises.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I suspect that the corporate world (and not a few politicians who cashed in on it) knew that it was a shell game from the outset... can't prove it, but seriously, as you said, without any metric for enforcement (or even confirmation), what else could it be?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Anybody who isn't self deluded by the whole concept can see that it's a big joke in the making. So would people take advantage? Yeah, of course they would, just like how John Edward takes advantage of derps who genuinely believe that it is actually possible to talk to the dead.
Look at Al Gore for example; the guy has gotten so rich off of this ever since his term as VP ended. FFS he even sells carbon offsets to himself. And the worst part? He's one of the biggest energy consumers in the US (for example, flies around in his own private jet instead of buying a ticket on an airline, which ends up using FAR LESS carbon on a per passenger basis.)
This article singles out Russia and Ukraine, but a larger issue is CFC-23, a nasty greenhouse gas. It's a chemical byproduct which Chinese and Indian companies are deliberately producing in order to destroy, because the cause the credits for destroying the byproduct are worth five times the value of stuff they're nominally trying to make.
The article mentions this, but doesn't mention that CFC-23 fraud supplies HALF of all the carbon emissions credits sold on the European market.
The cheating problem is a big part of why I favor a straight up carbon tax rather than trying to get fancy with incentives and credits. Place a flat tax per ton CO2e on companies which generate or import fossil fuels or CFCs. They will pass this cost on to customers, making goods that require lots of fossil fuels cost more, so the market will determine which emissions reductions strategies are most cost-effective. You can return the tax money to the people via lower income or payroll taxes, use it to reduce the deficit, or use it to pay for green infrastructure, I don't care. One more element is needed to make this work: you need import tariffs on manufactured goods coming in from countries that don't have a comparable carbon tax. Otherwise countries that "offshore" their emissions will have an advantage.
In addition to being simpler and harder to cheat, this system is preferable from a "big gubmint is evil" perspective. Conservatives don't want a massive government bureaucracy inspecting every element of the supply chain, making sure the incentives are properly spent and the credits fairly earned, and neither do I. I just want to use their worst enemy, taxes, to make their best friend, capitalism, work to help the planet. Put a green thumb on Adam Smith's invisible hand.
I'm a free-market environmentalist. I say we need to stop hoping that greed will go away, or worse pretending it doesn't exist, and start using it as a tool.
if a financial link is made to pollution, i cant think of too many ways to implement it.
guess it has to be either a payment for polluting, or a credit for not polluting.
one is called 'carbon credit', the other is called 'carbon tax'. i think the carbon tax would have been much simpler and easier to enforce, even if it were very small. but seems like it was a political hot potato, that few dared touch.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Well I have to hand it to them, I thought getting paid for not growing corn was a good business to be in but this is much better.