An analysis of the carbon credit trading industry from The Financial Times reveals that the industry is largely a sham (h/t SDA).

The FT investigation found:

• Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.


• Industrial companies profiting from doing very little - or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.


• Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.


• A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.


• Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

Carbon credits may or may not be useless in an environmental sense, but they make the buyers feel oh so good and green. As David Suzuki and Al Gore have made clear over the years, it's more about the image you portray than your actual effect on the environment.

The situation gets even murkier when you realize that the biggest carbon-con-artist of them all, Al Gore, purchases carbon credits from his own company. Gore then uses the profits from selling value-less credits to power his mega-mansion that in one month consumes twice as much power as the average American family does in a year.

It would be interesting to see an actual law enforcement agency look into this new "industry". If there is widespread fraud, the perpetrators should be shut down.

But why aren't environmentalists up in arms about this? They should be concerned that all of their hard work is for not due to some clever and greedy crooks. As Darcy says, environmentalists are only happy if the solution "resides within the loving arms of a money-sucking socialist scheme fathered by Karl Marx."

Labels: Environment, politics, Y2Kyoto