(September 29, 2011) This opinion piece by Viv Forbes of Australia’s Carbon Sense Coalition gets to the heart of the carbon market dilemma and its intrinsic vulnerability to fraud: essentially, no one cares. The carbon credit buyer wants “the bit of paper which allows him to keep operating” and the seller “just wants the money,” and anyone who should be monitoring for scammers doesn’t want to look too closely: they want the money, too.

Carbon Credit Fraud

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that it was a massive deception for the Gillard government to suggest they could cut Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions by 5-25% from 2000 levels by 2020 in spite of a rising population.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that such cuts can never be actually achieved without massive economic dislocation and contraction, and the government knows this.

By Viv Forbes for Canada Free Press

“The real plan is to achieve a fake reduction by forcing Australian companies to pay billions of dollars via hungry carbon traders to foreign carbon credit sharks for promises to cut their production of carbon dioxide.

“In most cases, this will not result in any reductions. At best it will produce largely worthless promises to not increase emissions in future. At worst it will be a fraud on Australian taxpayers and consumers.

“Mainly it will result in massive transfers of declining Australian wealth to foreign carbon shysters for zero climate benefit.”

“All over the world, the carbon casinos which trade emission certificates and carbon credits have been riddled with fraud because neither side to the transaction cares about the reality.

“The buyer of carbon credits just wants the bit of paper which allows him to keep operating. As long as it satisfies some carbon cop in the government carbon bank, he is happy. And if the carbon cop gets his cut, he too is happy.

“The seller of the carbon credit just wants the money. He too does not care whether or not the cuts are real. He just needs someone to believe his promises. Everyone in his country wants to see the foreign money arriving, so no one wants to look too closely.

“The Chicago Carbon Exchange has closed and the carbon price has collapsed in Europe amid widespread trading in fraudulent and stolen certificates.

“Soon only Australia and New Zealand will be left to trade increasingly worthless hot air certificates.”

“As the founder of Carbon Watch says “When ‘buying’ or ‘selling’ a sham commodity, the possibilities for fraud are endless”.

“The Gillard government must abandon plans to saddle Australia with an Emissions Trading Scheme which has already failed elsewhere.”

This opinion piece was originally published here [PDF here] by Canada Free Press.