Turns out New Zealanders have been buying carbon credits from the Ukraine. In the wake of the country’s Climate Cheats scandal, Andrew Dickens, for New Zealand’s Newstalk ZB, calls out the Emissions Trading Scheme as “rortable”.
“Carbon Crooks,” the compelling 2013 documentary on fraud in carbon markets and the failure of carbon trading to address climate change, is now available to U.S. viewers.
(August 15, 2012) The UN’s carbon trading scheme to reduce global concentrations of greenhouse gases has provided a handful of factories in developing nations with a perverse incentive to massively increase them.
(January 12, 2012) The first of many trials to come involving carbon trading tax-frauds lands one group in jail, with an order to pay the French state a total of 43 million euros.
The deaths of 23 Honduran farmers protesting the seizure of their lands by UN-approved palm oil plantations calls for Honduran carbon credits to be thrown out of the EU’s emission trading scheme, shows the dark side of carbon credit bonanza.
Kyoto has cost the world’s governments and companies at least $150-billion in research, subsidies, compliance costs and lost economic activity. Yet there is no proof it has saved even a tonne of carbon emissions.
(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.
(August 4, 2011) In its quest to promote green energy and reduce the world’s carbon footprint, the United Nations has so distorted the economics of power production that it is set to subsidize over three dozen coal plants in India with some $5.3 billion in “carbon credits.”
(February 28, 2011) Environmental NGO claims that carbon credits could lead to massive land grabs for environmentally damaging projects such as biofuels and industrial tree planting, and creates perverse incentives that reward pollution.
(February 23, 2011) Patricia Adams appeared on BNN’s SqueezePlay yesterday to discuss theft and fraud in carbon markets. Click the link below to watch the full video.
(February 16, 2011) In a February 14th National Post article, author Dan Gardner argued that ‘command and control’ environmental regulations should be replaced with a cap and trade system. But as Probe International Executive Director Patricia Adams points out, cap and trade is just another varient of the ‘command and control’ approach that Mr. Gardner claims to oppose. Below is her response in today’s National Post.
(February 14, 2011) The article from the Daily Independent in Nigeria explains how governments can profit from the panic over climate change.
(February 9, 2011) A Kenyan company has become the first recipient of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) credits. Meanwhile, the Government of the Philippines argues that carbon credits should be issued for nuclear power.
(February 8, 2011) Chuck Spinney at the Atlantic has written an interesting article comparing carbon credits to the complex mortgage dervativs that led to the financial meltdown.
(February 8, 2011) Austrian officials claim to have tracked down many stolen carbon credits, but have refused to disclose their serial numbers. They claim that they will not re-enter the system. Not everyone is satisfied with this assurance.
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