Money For Nothing

Trey Smith

Major publicly traded U.S. corporations, including Dow Chemical, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Cabot Corporation, have secured multi-million-dollar dubious carbon credits to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, as revealed in this investigative report.

Dow scored the largest purchase volumes. The Michigan-headquartered giant owns dozens of CO2-venting plants producing plastics and chemicals in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Poland. Altogether, those plants ranked 21st among the top 100 European buyers of certified emissions reduction certificates (CERs) that originated from questionable projects.

Power and processing plants operating in the European Union (EU), including subsidiaries of U.S. companies, are required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – which cause global warming – by switching to cleaner technologies or offsetting their emissions through the purchase of CERs.

For companies it is cheaper to offset their emissions than to actually reduce them. And due to weaknesses in European rules, they are able to do so.
~ from US Corporations Sponsor Carbon Scam in Europe by Stefano Valentino ~

It's sad to say that many environmentalists have fallen for the "carbon trading" scam. Across the globe, they have pressured governments to adopt this dubious strategy and, in places like Europe, they are now suffering the consequences!

I have never understood why so many progressive folks have thought this was such a great idea. It is a system open to manipulation and chicanery. Even worse, it doesn't lessen greenhouse gas emissions -- it only moves them around. What's the benefit in that?

As this report underscores, even the meager benefits this system was supposed to produce are nothing more than a mirage! The carbon credits so created don't really exist. They have turned out to be little more than hocus pocus creations that have allowed major corporations the ability to continue to pollute at will AND pocket ever growing profits.

In essence, these polluting corporations have received large amounts of money for doing nothing more than creating bogus offsets.