Comments on: You can call a rip-offset a CDM project, but it’s still a rip-offset

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:38:12 +0000

Before I left consulting, I was deeply involved in the brave new world of carbon credits. In the late 90’s it was mostly experienced environmental people mixed in with a few finance types, looking for a way to get business to give a crap about GHGs. Now its like the wild west and any bozo can get a job. I knew the industry was beyond help when about a year ago NPR had some a segment interviewing some new grads having a dinner party, and the journalist breathlessly described how two of them had jobs with offset providers, waxing on about this cool, hip new generation. Then the kids were interviewed and it was clear that had no clue what they were doing – but they felt they were important because they were generating ‘credits’. Actually, the comparison to CDOs is spot on, because now its all about – as we use to say – making carbon ‘fungible’, and who cares if the projects actually have any lasting benefit.

The CDM program is particularly silly, because since its inception, the number of bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through just to propose a project make it worthwhile only to those groups that have a project that is uncomplicated. Offsets are a good idea gone bad because of lack of a global regulatory regime that would ensure that only ‘real’ credits were generated. I still think there is an opportunity to use offsets to drive changes that wouldn’t otherwise occur, but flaring methane from a landfill isn’t one of them.

By: Modesty

Modesty — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:53:11 +0000

From the International Rivers fact sheet:

“Industrialized countries will need to meet their obligations
for financial transfers [to developing nations] in a way that is independent from and additional to their emission reduction obligations.”

Amen.

By: Patrick McCully

Patrick McCully — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:44:16 +0000

Thanks for another excellent posting on the CDM, Joe. Note that the GAO just came out with a stinging (by bureaucrat-speak standards) critique of the CDM (and the EU Emissions Trading System). Download it from http://gao.gov/products/GAO-09-151 and read the Reuters coverage here http://www.alertnet.org/ thenews/ newsdesk/ N02282641.htm. Also see International Rivers’ recent fact sheet on the CDM which we’re currently spreading around at the Poznan climate talks –
http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/3517

Patrick – internationalrivers.org