Even only semi-regular perusers of this little web log will be astonished, galled and maybe even venomously upset to discover that for once, and probably only the once going on past evidence, I actually agree with Christopher Booker :-
“The Clean Development Mechanism delivers the greatest green scam of all : Even the UN and the EU are wising up to the greenhouse gas scam, “the biggest environmental scandal in history”, says Christopher Booker. : By Christopher Booker : Published: 28 Aug 2010 : …The way the racket works is that Chinese and Indian firms are permitted to carry on producing a refrigerant gas known as HCF-22 until 2030. But a by-product of this process is HCF-23, which is supposed to be 11,700 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. By destroying the HCF-23, the firms can claim Certified Emission Reduction credits worth billions of dollars when sold to the West (while much of the useful HCF-22 is sold onto the international black market). Last year, destruction of CFCs accounted for more than half the CDM credits issued, in a market that will eventually, it is estimated, be worth $17 billion. Of the 1,390 CDM projects so far approved, less than 1 per cent accounts for 36 per cent of the total value. Even greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the “biggest environment scandal in history”…”
I would commend Mr Booker to get his chemical acronyms sorted out, by substituting “HCF” with “HFC”, or “HCFC”, but apart from that, which was fairly easy to unpick, it is quite an honourable description of the problem.
None of the money-based “flexible mechanisms” sewn into the Kyoto Protocol appear to be working, and that’s because they are (a) money-based and (b) not economy-wide.
We need comprehensive legislation and regulation to cover all Greenhouse Gas activities in the global economy, not just niche sectors and individual minor compounds.
And that means we need serious cuts in Carbon Dioxide emissions in the industrialised countries, starting yesterday.
We can’t offset this.
It is a good idea to attempt to provide finance to support developing countries in adaptation measures :-
https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jaM64qTlgp4tIu1J4ZKtMd_SX__w
https://www.faststartfinance.org/
but that does not absolve the industrialised countries of action. The industrialised countries do need to start diversifying out of Fossil Fuels – as fast as all the wind turbines, marine turbines, solar roofs, concentrated solar power plants, tidal barrages, tidal lagoons, compressed air storage, pumped storage, rock battery storage, geothermal, biogas, biohydrogen, bioethanol, biomass and so on can be deployed :-