Selling Out On Global Warming
Who could have anticipated that chicanery would result from international raised consciousness about the threat of global warning? There, does that capture the White House approach to the growing pressure on them to actually do something about our deteriorating planet?
It's already happened in Europe, there is a market driving prices of energy higher but doing nothing to solve the problems that continuing carbon based energy pose. It's the buying of energy credits. Instead of actually doing anything to decrease its output of harmful gases, the market of buying credits from carbon-absorbing units has made a substitute to avoid prosecution.
A growing industry in trading units such as farm acreage that absorb carbon has substituted for actual efforts to curb pollution.
So far, the farm bureau has packaged and sold 500,000 tons of carbon-emission credits, equal to a month's output from a 1,000-megawatt coal plant.
Carbon credits can also be gained by burying carbon dioxide under the oceans or sequestering it underground, reducing emissions through new technology and alternative fuels, or reforestation.
Worldwide, there are more than 3,000 projects to offset greenhouse gases, generating billions of dollars.
"When I was taught economics, I was taught that air and water were free goods," said Richard Sandor, the founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
But he added: "It was intuitively obvious to me that on a planet of 6 billion or 7 billion people, that was no longer the case."
Through a European subsidiary, his exchange handles a lion's share of the annual carbon-emissions trade with the 25 countries in the European Emissions Trading System.
Time magazine knighted him as a Hero of the Planet in 2002.
But he has also come to embody the concerns of environmentalists over the business of global warming, in which the planet's natural capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is turned into private property that can be sold to the highest bidder.
Last year, 19 major environmental groups urged local governments to boycott the Chicago exchange.
The smoke belching from industrial chimneys may be a thing of beauty to those who are profiting from it, but it is continuing to destroy the planet. Simply buying up credits seems to be a new way to save pollution for those who don't have any worries about our future.
It's a sure bet that the administration that created its own rationale for war, and has nothing but more lives thrown away to use as solutions to the problems in that war, will show no more respect for the environment and its needs.
Buying what is already doing its job saving the earth is not an acceptable substitute for lowering pollution. This must be our approach to global warming. Actual solutions, actual efforts, are needed.
It's already happened in Europe, there is a market driving prices of energy higher but doing nothing to solve the problems that continuing carbon based energy pose. It's the buying of energy credits. Instead of actually doing anything to decrease its output of harmful gases, the market of buying credits from carbon-absorbing units has made a substitute to avoid prosecution.
A growing industry in trading units such as farm acreage that absorb carbon has substituted for actual efforts to curb pollution.
So far, the farm bureau has packaged and sold 500,000 tons of carbon-emission credits, equal to a month's output from a 1,000-megawatt coal plant.
Carbon credits can also be gained by burying carbon dioxide under the oceans or sequestering it underground, reducing emissions through new technology and alternative fuels, or reforestation.
Worldwide, there are more than 3,000 projects to offset greenhouse gases, generating billions of dollars.
"When I was taught economics, I was taught that air and water were free goods," said Richard Sandor, the founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
But he added: "It was intuitively obvious to me that on a planet of 6 billion or 7 billion people, that was no longer the case."
Through a European subsidiary, his exchange handles a lion's share of the annual carbon-emissions trade with the 25 countries in the European Emissions Trading System.
Time magazine knighted him as a Hero of the Planet in 2002.
But he has also come to embody the concerns of environmentalists over the business of global warming, in which the planet's natural capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is turned into private property that can be sold to the highest bidder.
Last year, 19 major environmental groups urged local governments to boycott the Chicago exchange.
The smoke belching from industrial chimneys may be a thing of beauty to those who are profiting from it, but it is continuing to destroy the planet. Simply buying up credits seems to be a new way to save pollution for those who don't have any worries about our future.
It's a sure bet that the administration that created its own rationale for war, and has nothing but more lives thrown away to use as solutions to the problems in that war, will show no more respect for the environment and its needs.
Buying what is already doing its job saving the earth is not an acceptable substitute for lowering pollution. This must be our approach to global warming. Actual solutions, actual efforts, are needed.
Labels: Global Warming, The Environment
posted by Ruth at 2:38 AM
3 Comments:
Carbon sequestering under the ocean is sort of not such a good idea. Turns out that putting all that carbon down there harms the oceanic lifecycle.
See, coral reefs and shellfish rely on calcium carbonate to reproduce their homes (or to just reproduce). As coral and mollusks die, their shells drift to the ocean bottom where other creatures metabolize them, thus releasing the calcium and other minerals back into the ocean.
Put more carbon in and calcium carbonate becomes calcium BIcarbonate, which cannot be metabolized by the deep-ocean critters, nor can it be used by coral and shellfish.
yeesh, Time Out industrial world.
no wonder our corps are headed to the most corrupt and pliable spots to mass-belch products ( China and India ).
thanks, it's true, we mess with one thing and wind up having a totally different effect from what we intended.
I am sure that, as a lot of comments this a.m. re-inforced, individual efforts are really important. But I think individual efforts of the sort that direct our support toward environmentally responsible entities are a big part of the repair we need to the environment.
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