Carbon Trading is a con

Carbon trading will not change fundamental behaviours. Large companies will switch production to countries with low labour costs and no emissions caps.

In New Zealand the left wing Government in it's infinitesimal brilliance decided that cultivated forest owners could not trade carbon savings from their forests, but that from 2012 they may not be able to harvest them.

I tell you throughout New Zealand right now forests are being massacred by chainsaw. This is how bright the politicians are.



[edit on 28-4-2007 by sy.gunson]

So whats your point? Are you mad that foresters are judiciously cutting their forests in anticipation of this date?

The point Arius is that carbon Trading is not a solution.

It's just one more system for the impoverishment of the poor by the rich.

It's not about the environment. It is a bureaucratic imposition on our lives which at best is pointless and at worst is exploitative capitalism.

...and about forests in NZ, I don't blame the owners of those forests personally. One of them is a friend of mine. I understand their paradox. they are being squeezed into a situation where they have no choice except to work against the interests of the environment and in conflict with the intention of the new Carbon trading regime.

Personally I feel a carrot approach is better than a stick. Why aren't governments doing the obvious ?

I mean why not tax petrol sales and put the tax into interest free loans for purchase of alternative technology cars ?

Most of us ordinary working people would love to drive cleaner vehicles, but often can't afford them.

By the way Arius, i like some of your other posts.

it's refreshing to see more and more threads like this in the Fragile Earth subforum, because the dangers of alledgedly well-meant interventions against the recently created spectre of global warming are extreme, while the merits of some of these policies are questionable at best, while most of them fall into the fraudulent and destructive category.

take the deforestation debate:


during the 1990s, everyone around the world, including ecologists were screaming from the top of their lungs it had to stop, today it's merely a footnote to so called 'green' fuel ethanol.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

how quickly they forget. at the same time, Malaysia and other countries are gobbled up by politically aided tycoons who use their power to turn the land into a (to them) profitable biodiesel farm. this kind of product lends itself to industrial agriculture, becaue there are few if any quality standards. www.talkaboutprofootball.com... the net result is of course soil erosion ( see www.biotech-info.net... for a warning example of the predictable outcome of industrialised agriculture) with all that entails.


the remedies prescribed by GW proponents are, by and large, worse than what they are designed to 'cure'. what could be worse than blowing SO2 into the atmosphere? have people forgotten how hard people tried to get rid of SO2 emissions in the 1980s to stop or at least reduce acid rain? SO2 + water -> sulphuric acid how hard is that to understand?


www.abovetopsecret.com...

next time they'll propose the use of nuclear weapons, probably. there's more of course:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

there's no lunacy kinky enough to disqualify for GW topics, or so it seems.


a one last thread i'd like to add, about fuel ethanol and it minimal 'carbon benefits' for which we are willingly blowing food through the chimney:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

using food for fuel is extremely despicable when you consider soil depletion, soil erosion and subsidized fuel driving food and gas prices at the same time, thereby creating a triple burden on consumers. the 'air tax' would be the fourth.

[edit on 28.5.2007 by Long Lance]

Wow Lance,

Quite a bit to wade through. I take your points however.

An example of misguided manipulation of an environment is what European settlement of New Zealand did. Early settlers introduced rabbits for game, but as they had no natural predators they got out of hand and destroyed grasslands needed for agriculture.

Weasels and stoats were introduced to control these rabbits, but they preferred the native birdlife which also had never before had native predators. The loss of birdlife meant that insects got out of control and farmers had to use insecticides more to control other pests.

A few years ago farmers clandestinely introduced a strain of Mixamitosis to wipe out the rabbits. Weasels and stoats increased predation on endangered native species as they ran out of rabbits. Also because the release was not managed, rabbits survived which were resistant and they well ... did what rabbits do best. Now rabbit numbers are climbing again and there is no solution.

As for biofuels they have a place, but one cannot help suspect the assumption that carbon released from plants at high rates will still do just as much damage.

I was intrigued enough recently to compare carbon emission from a short haul jet flight with an equivalent emission if the aircraft's passengers paired off to share a car ride for the same distance. I discovered that the plane ride produced 18 times less carbon emissions than the equivalent car journeys.

Then I compared a train journey of the same distance (diesel loco) and found the train was almost as bad as the passengers all taking cars. About 15 times more carbon emissions as a Boeing 737-300, yet the greenies are very vocal in attacking plane travel.

The one form of emission we can find alternate fuels for most easily are car journies yet the greenies are less vocal about changing that.

I prefer to see more uptake of hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell technology.

I think Governments have a role in this because only governments can impose both regulations and direct tax incentives to necessary areas.

I don't see creating a carbon trading regime as an answer. It is open to abuse. Honest folk who abide by it will get screwed whilst the wealthy and unscrupulous will find ways around carbon trading. It will not achieve what it intends to do and do more harm than good.

don't get me wrong, mistakes happen, i just feel that the predictable outcome of the current CO2 craze will be a thorough dismantling of ecological movements and policies.

carbon mania is imho, a trojan horse, which was designed fro the get-go as a centralized, detached and bureaucratic mechanism of control rather than envirnmental policies. its main advantage is ease of participation. ignorance is is the ticket and the media biz is eager to foment hysteria.


regarding your comment about hydrogen fuel cells - there's an old thread on the subject which clearly illustrates that, at their current level of efficiency, fuel cells are extremely wasteful:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

it's of course well within the realm of possibilites that a breakthrough renders the whole point moot or that less known designs are much more efficient.

PS: a month ago i had the same 'conversation', see www.abovetopsecret.com... the big difference being that this time the thread actually survived.

[edit on 29.5.2007 by Long Lance]