Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I wrote previously about the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. In that post, I pointed out an underlying irony of the CDM. At the behest of European AGW supporters who would never, ever think of allowing the building of a hydroelectric dam in their own country, European money is being sent to China where it is used to build … hydroelectric dams.
Of course, it being part of the UN, there’s always more to the CDM story. In this case the “more” is provided by Wikileaks, in particular a diplomatic cable that discussed the CDM in India. The fraud revealed in the cable was so egregious, in fact, that even the AGW supporting Scientific American said:
… most of the carbon-offset projects in India fail to meet the CDM requirements set by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
So most of the projects that were funded, shouldn’t have been funded. OK, it’s a private-sector scam within a UN scam. Insert your preferred expression of surprise here, along with the required quote from Casablanca.
So far, no big shocks, we find that a UN project is corrupt root and branch, be still my beating heart. But it raised a different question in my mind. Which CDM requirements couldn’t the Indian projects meet? I mean, these are Indian businessmen, I’d have said there was no requirement that they couldn’t figure out how to meet (or at a minimum pretend to meet) … so what was the regulation that was laying them low? The leaked cable contains the Kafkaesque answer.
The hurdle that the Indian projects couldn’t get over is something I hadn’t heard of called the “additionality criteria”. This says the project has to be something that is additional, something that wouldn’t otherwise happen without the CDM assistance. The Kyoto Protocol says that projects that would occur without CDM assistance are not “additional”, and so they should not be certified as emission reductions. Or as the leaked cable puts it in delightful bureaucratese:
(Note: The project has to prove that it does not use commonly-available technology and that it is unviable without carbon credit revenue. End Note.)
Now that the note has ended, stop and consider that for a moment … the project has to use unusual, cutting edge, novel technology, and it has to be a project that would fail without the CDM.
If I set out to make some guidelines for assistance to emission reduction technologies, those seem like the polar opposite of the guidelines I would make.
First, why not allow the use of proven, reliable, available emission reduction technologies along with unusual, cutting edge technologies with no track record? Instead of reducing emissions, aren’t you reducing your chances of success way, way down by only allowing what may not work?
Second, why fund projects that are “unviable”, as the jargon would have it, if you don’t assist them? As a businessman, the idea of specifically selecting a project for funding on the basis that it absolutely won’t work without free money is … well … it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. The regulation requires that you pick incipient losers, ideas guaranteed to go belly-up unless you shower them with largesse … which seems to this boy like a very poor way to pick winners.
Given those requirements, I can now understand why the majority of the Indian projects “fail to meet the CDM requirements set by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
It’s because the CDM requirements are set up so that only impending failures can have a hope of success.
Did I mention Kafka? Perhaps I was thinking of Catch-22 …
In any case, this whole idea of offsetting your carbon sins by paying carbon indulgences seems like a killer idea, it puts the Nigerian 419 scams to shame. My plan is to bring this same brilliant concept to the masses by extending the whole theory of carbon offsets and “carbon neutrality” to encompass sexual fidelity.
Here’s the scheme in all of its beauty: if you want to cheat on your wife or husband, you pay me a fee. I split the fee with one of my employees (actually independent contractors, if anyone is looking for work) who promises not to cheat on their wife or husband for the same amount of time that you have paid for. That way, for a small fee (payable by cash, cheque, or credit card) you can rest assured that your extra-marital actions are “fidelity neutral”.
Makes as much sense as the CDM process, and it would likely make more money. Hey, maybe I could even get some free CDM bucks … oh, wait, I’d have to overcome the “additionality criteria” …
w.
PS – Required Conflict of Interest Statement: at various times in my life, my grandmother, my father, and my mother all worked for the United Nations …
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Willis, you just described Solyndra. Let’s subsidize the losers so that they can flame out more spectacularly.
And now, Chu is flushing money down the toilet like a drug dealer with a SWAT team outside.
Too late: http://www.cheatneutral.com/
A W
“PS – Required Conflict of Interest Statement: at various times in my life, my grandmother, my father, and my mother all worked for the United Nations …”
Well, aren’t YOU a conflicted so-and-so. Imagine, biting the hand(s) that feed you so many times! Oh the additionality of it all!
Does one laugh or cry? The whole thing stretches one’s credulity to the utter limit. It gets crazier and crazier. Where does one start trying to fight all the idiocy?
Thank you Willis for an informative, if despair-producing, piece.
PS I loved the cartoon!
Senator DeMint came up with a term recently: Venture Socialism. All of the current goings on fit perfectly the textbook definition of (no, not implementing Godwin’s Law here) fascism. The merging of big business and government, with government calling the shots, and picking winners and losers. I truly weep for my nation, and my world.
It isn’t a catch 22; it is agenda 21.
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
You may complain about how and why the UN spends money, but does it really matter? As long as we are throwing money away by giving it to them in the first place, does it matter whether they burn it in dumpsters, or give it to corrupt politicians?
Not to dispute the general point of this post, but what are the grounds for asserting that European AGW supporters would never think of allowing hydroelectric power stations in their own countries? Most European countries already have them, notably Norway which gets most of its electricity from hydro. I don’t think many have been built recently, but that is probably because most suitable sites have already been used. If more were proposed, I dare say there would be objections, but mainly from local people who wouldn’t want villages flooded, etc. In the case of windfarms, which cause comparable or worse environmental damage, most of the objections come from local people: the AGW ‘greenies’ are generally all in favour, provided they don’t have to live near them.
@Andrew
CheatNeutral is great. The natural outcome of an offset culture.
I am surprised the cartoonist Madden did not use a likeness of Al Gore for this cartoon. It is the epitomy of his carbon credits.
Nothing new here. Catholic church was doing this centuries ago with sin off sets. Donations to the church would get your time in pergatory reduced. Now the AGW church is offering the same thing. For the same reasons. And with the same results. Those who don’t know history are doomed etc etc.
Individual success, be it a project, human, company, or country is antithetical to the UN. It must not only be discouraged, it must be stamped out if organizations such as the UN are to have a future. They define down to the least common denominator, as opposed to attempting to raise up to the highest maximum value.
“The hurdle that the Indian projects couldn’t get over is something I hadn’t heard of called the “additionality criteria”. This says the project has to be something that is additional, something that wouldn’t otherwise happen without the CDM assistance.”
“Additionality” is a well known concept when it comes to doling out tax payers money. I worked in a Government Quango for a while and we could only provide funding if there was a case of “additionality” i.e. the investment or job creation or whatever would not have happened without government funding. In the case of job creation the job creator would not have made the investment or would have gone to a competing country with the investment. Typically the funding would have to be returne (or part returned) if the job creation did not take place or at a reduced level or the plant closed before a set time.
David @ur momisugly 10:22,
I don’t think that telling Norwegians or even suggesting that they are part of Europe, or a ‘European country’, is a winning strategy, or a wise idea. Not a good idea at all.
David says:
September 30, 2011 at 10:22 am
“Not to dispute the general point of this post, but what are the grounds for asserting that European AGW supporters would never think of allowing hydroelectric power stations in their own countries?”
German Greens are against any infrastructure project that has not been initiated by themselves (I daresay; to my knowledge, there is no exception to this rule). Of course in the case of new large hydro dams they would bemoan
a) the loss of biodiversity and habitats for amphibians
b) the Methane emissions that emanate from such a large body of standing water, with tree stumps fouling on its ground; a truely dangerous thing with manyfold capacity for runaway thermal meltdown compared to CO2.
See? It’s easy being in the anti crowd; you can always unite with the local NIMBY folks and show the journos some police violence during the inevitable protests; giving you political leverage.
It’s a whole different story once you’re in power; see for instance Joschka Fischer’s defense of the NATO attacks against Serbia, when he, a Green and pacifist / Anti American protester was the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Germany.
It’s always refreshing when somebody gets that right! I’m tired of the ignorant, educated people in this country claiming that capitalism is fascist. I almost want to cry when they claim people who want smaller government are fascists.
Hi Willis,
I am very happy not to cheat on my wife – can I sign up as one of your contractors?
Or do I have to say that I WOULD cheat unless I get the money – i am confused….
Maybe I can not cheat using novel methods, such as not going to strip clubs or massage parlours?
Hmmm, a whole new set of opportunites…
Actually, Willis, the whole scheme of these CO2 offsets look as if they are ventured by Milo Minderbinder.
Joseph Heller can be proud!
Willis, if you get red, angry and heart & stroke ready in my place, I will buy some Health Offset Credits from you 🙂 I will then be In Hoc to you 🙂
David says:
September 30, 2011 at 10:22 am
Not to dispute the general point of this post, but what are the grounds for asserting that European AGW supporters would never think of allowing hydroelectric power stations in their own countries?
The Danes (who cook with the worlds most expensive electricity), of course, have to rely on imported Norwegian hydro power when their massive wind installations go inconveniently dark. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html
California is, however, too pure to use “unsustainable”, “big hydro” even when its former suppliers are located beyond it’s borders in Washington. http://polizeros.com/2011/04/27/hydropower-not-considered-renewable-energy-in-california/
By dealing rationally with bad science, devious politics and all the other fraud, we lose track of the underlying movement to gain control by means of guilt and fear.
Andrew Ward says:
September 30, 2011 at 10:01 am
“Too late: http://www.cheatneutral.com/ ”
The first funny warmists I’ve seen. (Watch the video on the site; at about 09:00 they start talking earnestly about CO2 reduction)
The “Catch 22” of climate mitigation. If its makes economic sense it can’t be funded, if it makes no economic sense, it can’t be successful. No wonder the organized crime love the CDM.
“Chuckles says:
I don’t think that telling Norwegians or even suggesting that they are part of Europe, or a ‘European country’, is a winning strategy, or a wise idea. Not a good idea at all.”
Huh? You must know something I don’t. Entirely possible, of course, but the last time I checked a map, Norway was still part of Europe. Yup, just checked again – still there.
Of course, as every schoolboy knows, Norway is not a member of the European Union, but it is a member of many other European organisations, like the Council of Europe and the European Economic Area. So far as I know, no-one in Norway has any problem with that, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Re Gary Swift: Catch-22 vs. Agenda-21 .
Spot on! A very perceptive linkage. Both make just as much sense, too.
Yes, it does matter! Burn it, and everyone might profit slightly by reduced inflation from a reduction in the money supply. Give it to a corrupt politician and a select few in the right (i.e. wrong) place have a huge profit motive to continue the charade.
More Soylent Green! says: @ur momisugly September 30, 2011 at 11:12 am
“It’s always refreshing when somebody gets that right! I’m tired of the ignorant, educated people in this country claiming that capitalism is fascist. I almost want to cry when they claim people who want smaller government are fascists.”
_____________________________________________________________________
AMEN to that.
I spend a heck of a lot of time explaining to people that the Gov/Corporate collusion marked by the Gov/Corp revolving door is NOT Capitalism. Corporate written regulations via the K street lobbyists plus Fractional Reserve Banking has been the death of true capitalism.
Even the rag, USA today, has finally gotten a clue: Small businesses losing out to red tape
You will notice it is the big guys like AL Gore with his New Forests Company, who will be making the money while the peasants are kicked out of their homes and left to starve as cropland in Africa is planted in trees noted to be not only invasive but inedible to livestock and most everything else…… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/#comment-751952
So much for Big Al being an “environmentalist” he is worse than a snake oil salesman and should be in jail for the murder of the boy Friday Mukamperezida under the “authority to control” doctrine.
“….Over the past two decades, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has articulated a standard of liability for individual officers that is based not on personal participation but rather upon a piercing of the corporate veil. In so doing, the Federal Circuit has, inadvertently it would seem, radically altered the nature of individual officer liability, expanding the scope of such liability and exposing corporate officers to a form of strict liability….” http://alsb.roundtablelive.org/Resources/Documents/NP%202001%20Oswald.pdf
OK, so that was about patents but it has also extended to liability for damage to the environment in the 1980’s. Would this not be a wonderful test case… Think of all the lovely press coverage.