No Carbon Trading Market, But Lots Of Scams

Posted on Thu 11/03/2011 by PA Pundits - International

By Andrew Bolt

Greg Sheridan is right, of course:

Although the carbon tax will cost Australians $9 billion in its first year, our greenhouse emissions continue to rise under the tax. We hit our target of a 5 per cent reduction mainly by buying carbon credits on the international market, which the government assumes will be functioning by 2016.

I recently interviewed two of the best-informed international statesmen on this issue, and the interviews left me convinced that the international trading scheme lies halfway between a fantasy and a fraud…

John Baird, the Canadian Foreign Minister, again demonstrates a cut-through style of argument so desperately lacking in the political waffling on global warming we’re used to from Canberra:

I asked Baird whether Canada would ever join an international carbon trade. He replied: “There’s nothing to join. Where is it going on today?”

More generally, on carbon trading he said: “One of the problems I have with that (approach) is that everyone just lines up to get credit… (Carbon trading) is like a pyramid marketing scheme. You don’t have to actually sell the dog food, you just have to get 10 of your friends to do it and you’ll get royalties.”…

Baird, who was twice Canada’s environment minister, is too polite to use these precise words but says, in effect, that the international politics of climate change trading is a giant scam.

He offers this example: “If we all decided we had to lose 6 per cent of our 1991 body weight to be healthy, and I told you last year I lost 100 pounds anyway, that wouldn’t be too credible as a commitment.”

By this he is referring to Europe’s use of 1991 as the base year for carbon calculations. Britain was switching from coal to gas. West Germany absorbed East Germany and then shut down East German industry. France ramped up nuclear power. None of these actions was taken for greenhouse gas abatement reasons but they all allowed Europe to claim outsize carbon credits.

Baird asks: “Where are the countries that are actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 1997 when they signed the Kyoto Protocol?”

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/