(December 8, 2009) As the Copenhagen climate conference opens, the existing mechanism for carbon trading is drawing close scrutiny. The Chinese authorities’ misuse of the carbon credit scheme, CDM, has come to the surface, challenging the effectiveness of the global carbon trade in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Breach in the global-warming bunker rattles climate science at the worst time
(December 4, 2009) Leaked e-mails from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit threaten to undermine Copenhagen summit on carbon emissions.
Google’s climate ‘scholars’
(November 27, 2009) Methods used to tabulate the number of experts who are skeptical of climate change leave something to be desired.
Cooking the climate books
(November 25, 2009) The Climategate e-mails seem to suggest that much of what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims is "settled science" is based on data manipulated to confirm assertions that man is dangerously altering our climate.
Carbon credit scams add to the growing list of alleged fraud cases
(October 6, 2009) Officials in at least five European countries are investigating an international carbon credit scam considered to be worth more than $1.5 billion. According to a recent report for the Guardian, the scam was originally coordinated by gangs in Britain and Spain who bought and sold emissions allowances across borders in order to avoid paying Value Added Tax (VAT).
Earning money from air by harvesting carbon
(October 6, 2009) There are signs that nascent Redd projects are already leading to social conflict, possible fraud and worsening land disputes.
Who to blame? UN wants to make auditors of carbon credit projects liable for their work
(September 21, 2009) The UN’s new plan to help regulate the carbon market will make auditors liable for their work, writes Brady Yauch.
At what cost are carbon credits funding hydro projects in the developing world
(August 7, 2009) The Carbon Development Mechanism (CDM), a market-based tool developed by the UN to cut green house gas emissions, may be heralding a boon in hydro development projects in China and the developing world – and doing so at the cost of the environment and local landowners. As policy makers and environmentalists across the globe prepare for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this winter, criticisms of carbon credit schemes like the CDM are begining to surface.
MOZAMBIQUE: Biofuel companies line up for land and carbon credits
(March 6, 2009) Despite shrinking demand for biofuels globally, the government of Mozambique may soon grant millions of hectares of land to biofuel developers chasing UN-brokered carbon credits.
The Guardian: Indian environmentalists criticize UN carbon credit scheme
(February 8, 2009) Environmentalists criticize the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism as “ineffectual,” the Guardian reported on February 5.
How Kyoto credit scams work
(January 27, 2009) In another striking expose of carbon credit lunacy, AP reporters Joe McDonald and Charles Hanley report that a German coal-fired utility is buying “carbon credits” from a Chinese hydro dam, displacing thousands of poor farmers in the process, driving up electricity costs in Germany, and yet doing nothing for the environment.
Backgrounder: A roundup up of Carbon Fraud reports
(January 8, 2009) A roundup up of stories, reports, and other coverage of fraud in carbon markets.
A Great Wall of carbon credits
(January 8, 2009) BADALING, CHINA – A bitter wind knifes down the Great Wall of China and through a stand of smoketrees, Chinese pine, maidenhair and Shantung maple.
Measuring the Clean Development Mechanism’s Performance and Potential
(August 1, 2008) The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is the first global attempt to address a global environmental public goods problem with a market-based mechanism.
A Realistic Policy on International Carbon Offsets
(April 1, 2008) As the United States designs its strategy for regulating emissions of greenhouse gases, two central issues have emerged. One is how to limit the cost of compliance while still maintaining environmental integrity. The other is how to “engage” developing countries in serious efforts to limit emissions. Industry and economists are rightly concerned about cost control yet have found it difficult to mobilize adequate political support for control mechanisms such as a “safety valve;” they also rightly caution that currently popular ideas such as a Fed-like Carbon Board are not sufficiently fleshed out to reliably play a role akin to a safety valve.
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