As details emerge about the long-awaited climate bill from senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, I find it increasingly easier to contain my enthusiasm for their proposal.
The latest disappointing news is that Kerry plans to drop the tax on transportation fuels. This leaves utilities as the only sector immediately covered in their emissions-reduction strategy, a sector that accounts for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide the U.S. emits each year.
Given that electricity producers burn most of the coal extracted from decapitated mountains, this might seem like a decent first step. But the other devil in the details emerging on KGL is that carbon offsets will figure prominently in the new legislation. Instead of actually reducing CO2 emissions or purchasing permits to keep coal fires burning, polluters will have the much cheaper option of helping to finance projects in developing countries that supposedly lead to an equivalent reduction in CO2.
Sounds good in theory, but in practice carbon offsets are an illusion. Or, as Friends of the Earth labeled them in an excellent report last fall, "A Dangerous Distraction."
As we weigh the pluses and minuses of the forthcoming KGL bill, the minuses pile up fast. This is a good time to revisit the FoE report, which dispels any notion that offsets are a viable strategy for reducing CO2. Be warned, when you finish reading their critique, you'll needed an ibuprofen to relieve the soreness in your eyebrow muscles.
In the final hours of negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, developed nations worried they wouldn't be able to achieve their emissions reduction targets. They needed an escape hatch, something other than actually reducing CO2 emissions in their own countries. Thus was born carbon offsets and the creation of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Through the CDM, polluters purchase certified emission reductions (CERs) in poorer nations, investing in projects that would curb carbon in the future. To qualify for CDM funding, a project has to prove it is additional, that the project wouldn't have happened anyway. In other words, a project asserts that it couldn't be constructed without CDM assistance. As FoE reported, many projects qualify despite the inability to prove they are additional.
From "A Dangerous Distraction":
International Rivers cites the example of the Xiaogushan, Gansu, hydro project: A 2003 Asian Development Bank report on the project said it was the cheapest option for expanding generation in Gansu, regardless of CDM revenue, and a priority for the local and provincial government. Yet in 2006, two years after construction started, the developers claimed that without CDM support it was too risky "to reach financial closure and [...] commence the project construction." It was CDM-approved in August 2006.
In some instances, the Clean Development Mechanism should be renamed the Less Dirty Development Mechanism. In 2007, the CDM ruled that new electric plants that burn coal more efficiently - and therefore emit less CO2 than older plants - could receive funding and qualify as CERs. Regarding a 4 gigawatt coal-fired complex in India, the FoE report quotes David Wheeler, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development:
"Instead of supporting critical zero-emissions energy investments, scarce international resources are sweetening a private sector project that will emit over 700 million tons of CO2 during its operating life."
By their very nature, offsets provide no real reductions in global carbon emissions because they're based on what might happen in the future, not what's happening now. English journalist Dan Welch, quoted by International Rivers, sums it up succinctly by saying, "Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened."
By giving utilities the option of purchasing cheap offsets, we would delay, by precious decades, America's conversion to clean energy. Polluters would simply keep burning coal as long as offsets are available for a fraction of the cost of low-carbon power.
Looking over the details of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal, as reported by Reuters, there are many more reasons for concern - stripping EPA authority on greenhouse gases, more offshore oil and gas drilling, for example. But carbon offsets are truly the fatal flaw in this scheme, and if the KGL climate bill is the only train that's leaving the station right now, we're better off waiting for the next train.
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Although not yet widely believed by scientists, water can replace oil as fuel.
Future cars might become substantial power plants when suitably parked, ending any need to build coal or nuclear plants and demonstrating far less expensive alternatives to fossil fuel. Eventually, automobiles may pay for themselves.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
To learn more about water as fuel, visit the website of parallel technology developer, BlackLight Power.
Scientists understandably have a hard time accepting fractional Hydrogen, the basis of this radically new energy.
Laboratories should repeat the fractional Hydrogen experiments published by Rowan University and successfully repeated by GEN3 Partners, who advise Fortune 100 firms.
National labs should repeat the experiments as well as design their own.
As technology using small quantities of water as fuel is demonstrated and reaches the market, it will become increasingly difficult to ridicule, ignore or deny.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, within a few months a bomber rolled off an assembly line every 59 minutes.
These radically new technologies are much simpler and inherently cost-competitive.
Let's have an all out effort to develop them without delay!
There will be widespread support to end the rising price of imported oil - which threatens to abort economic recovery.
A 24/7 development program is pregnant. How quickly can it be born?
Kerry was in Skull and Bones just like Bush. The implication is that he is aligned with the mainstream elitist powers in the US. I never gave it much thought before but this bill sure puts him on the side of the status quo. The problem is that the status quo is running us squarely into a collision with tomorrow.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-10.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/02/60minutes/main576332.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones
Now, where is Lindsey Graham coming from?
Perhaps the President will metamorphose into a leader like Roosevelt, willing to throw down the "green" gauntlet for meaningful reform which will improve our lives and those of generations to come. Perhaps he will be willing to lose in order to win in the end, and he'll put those amazing campaign skills to work building popular support for meaningful legislation that will actually provide a platform for reaching the necessary goals to reverse climate change. But after witnessing the healthcare fight, I find it hard to believe that our federal officials are interested in anything other than minor tweaks to the status quo--the world be damned.
British Columbia has a great mechanism to control climate change--the carbon tax. It's imposed at the point of entry, and the revenue collected is returned to households to offset the increase in carbon-based energy costs--tax and dividend. Their economy is stable compared to ours, and the people love it--they re-elected the same government that imposed it. No offsets, no energy market to be manipulated, just a straight-forward plan that acknowledges the actual costs of carbon-based and sustainable energy and also pays households with a "green dividend check." What American wouldn't like to get a green check? In this economy, how many of us can afford increases in energy without being compensated for the increased costs?