Note: Never mind that trees plantings to offset emissions actually makes the environment worse according to one study. (See: Carbon offsets ‘harm environment’ – BBC. The poor farmers are bearing the brunt of misguided and scientifically unfounded global warming fears and “solutions.”
CNNMONEY.com
The other side of carbon trading
Planting trees in Uganda to offset greenhouse-gas emissions in Europe seemed like a good idea – until farmers were evicted from their land to make room for a forest. Fortune’s Stephan Faris reports.
(Fortune Magazine) — Planting trees in Mount Elgon National Park in eastern Uganda seemed like a project that would benefit everyone. The Face Foundation, a nonprofit group established by Dutch power companies, would receive carbon credits for reforesting the park’s perimeter. It would then sell the credits to airline passengers wanting to offset their emissions, reinvesting the revenues in further tree planting. The air would be cleaner, travelers would feel less guilty and Ugandans would get a larger park.
But to the farmers who once lived just inside the park, the project has been anything but a boon. They have been fighting to get their land back since being evicted in the early 1990s and have pressed their case with lawsuits.
Last year, when the courts granted three border communities an injunction against the evictions, the farmers took it as permission to clear the land they consider theirs. Now a stubble of stumps – all that’s left of the trees meant to absorb carbon dioxide – dots the rows of newly planted maize and budding green beans.
The project in Uganda is part of a growing trade in voluntary carbon offsets, in which environmentally concerned consumers pay to have others remove an amount of carbon equal to what they emit. Vendors earn carbon credits by planting trees, which capture carbon from the atmosphere, or by modifying existing factories to consume fewer fossil fuels.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
How about this headline?
“Country levelled and 600 000 people killed by country seeking fossil fuels”
How does that sound Marc??
In fact we are getting pretty impatient that they won’t give up their oil.
“Defence Minister Brendan Nelson is writing to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to warn him that the patience of the Australian people over the war should not be “excessively tested”.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/31/2020121.htm
Thats right just give up the damn oil already.
The new level this blog has reached has astounded me. Posting something like this for the usual green beat up whilst happily ignoring (or is that accepting?) displaced people, wildlife and natural heritage (eg. Aboriginal rock carvings) to make way for oil, minerals, agriculture and infrastructure is obviously perfectly in line with the doublespeak spewed fourth by you lot. All we can do is wait for a moronic statement from Schiller and all will be right with the world.
Travis, what about a note from you (to publish as a new thread) about aboriginal rock carvings and mining?
Very interesting. So the area was forested in 1990 but the eurospivs are claiming carbon credits for the replacement forest. My understanding is that this is entirely at variance with Kyotos Interruptus principles.
We have been told by our own Australian Greenhouse Office that the only part of such a plantation that would gain carbon credits would be the growth increment over and above the growth that would have taken place if the original trees had not been removed.
So either the AGO is giving an overly strict interpretation of the rules to Australian land owners or the europeans are playing fast and loose with the rules, again.
But don’t you just love the irony of all those “aware” metrocentrics swaning about the planetary transit lounges while some poor folk who want nothing more than an honest subsistence foot the bill.
Do Guardian & Independent readers make your flesh crawl too?
At least fossil fuels are useful and remain our only dependable energy source. We wouldn’t be here now without them.
Carbon trading, carbon offsets etc are all get rich schemes that are part of the global warming industry and serve no useful purpose.
If we just concentrated on developing new, viable sources of energy, everyone would benefit, and everyone would be happy, except for those who want to impose energy poverty on the world.
So we want Iraq’s oil?
Why, when we’ve already got East Timor’s?
Hint for the geographically challenged – East Timor is slightly closer to Australia than Iraq.
600k killed? Where? By who? Why not 6 scillion gazillion if you’re going for ultra hyperbole? (also known as ‘lies’).
Paul – that’s really fanciful – so another poorly run African business venture has gone belly up with dodgy local politics, land tenure and guns etc – so what else is new. Not simply isolated to this issue. “It’s Africa baby” –
People are very silly if they invest in the carbon market without a full analysis of the risks (like any investment) and deal with anyone that cannot demonstrate a compliant and auditable scheme. Satellites and other forms of remote sensing – lidar – can easily do that monitoring. That requires some rules and standards. If your carbon sink is burned down or illegally cleared – well it’s an emission and the owner is liable for the carbon lost if not insured – that’s why sensible schemes would hedge over wide geographic areas for such unforeseen disasters, and may include some insurance. And you would not invest in places that have open conflict or significant political instability.
Regardless of whether you like it or not there is a market for carbon, and the market has determined there is a market. Does anyone really understand complex derivatives that are another part of the stockmarket? But there is a market nonetheless.
“just concentrated on developing new, viable sources of energy, everyone would benefit” – HOLY COW – that’s what most the AGW crowd has been banging on about – including Hansen, Ender, and our Australian federal and state governments with clean coal etc etc. Solar, wind, tidal, waves, clean coal, smart efficiency measures, and yes even nuclear.
It’s just framing and a try-on to suggest that AGW types in general want to limit energy use or have us wearing sack cloths and walk around self-flagellating for our sins.
“energy poverty” indeed !! Baa Humbug !! more framing
Why would you want to deny a flow of money from the first world to the third world for replanting rainforest in Indonesia, South-East Asia, New Guinea and Polynesia. In a properly run scheme that benefits the locals. The value is for more than simply carbon. Other timber and ecological benefits also apply.
Why would you want to deny Tasmanian forestry opportunities in this area. Or novel approaches for storing carbon in Australia’s rangelands. Properly setup (and we’re not at that point should Mottsa barge in ranting and eye gouging) there ought to be a way for our landholders to realise their vegetation assets as carbon sinks.
Having vented on the above – if all that is done is business as usual for CO2 emissions – and all we do is offset and trade well yes we’ve haven’t progressed far at all.
Marano has framed this post as “Poor African Farmers Evicted to Make Way for Carbon Offset Forests ” – yep no excuse for bad business – but bad business is not limited to one industry.
He quotes “The poor farmers are bearing the brunt of misguided and scientifically unfounded global warming fears” – well not according to his national science organisations and his nation’s participation in the IPCC process. What is he saying – that the previous GOP controlled US government and a Republican president have let a massive conspiracy of illegal and unsupervised research be produced by an administration looking the other way. Or would this be just a try-on in Inhofe’s ongoing war on science. What a bunch of creeps !
Well not really Luke, whilst everyone are happy to discuss the issues the only group to suffer the consequences are the poor farmers, who have no rights or resources.
Well really yes Rog – it’s their gun wielding country-men that are doing the violence ! And golly the dispute seems to have being going for some time eh? “It’s Africa baby”.
As per usual, you are not making any sense.
Speaking of holy cows and other sacred dinosaurs, hows your mate Ender going with his wind mill?
It must almost be ready to move into – oh, I forgot, Ender claims that he never said he was going to sell his coastal home, with pool, and move inland to build an energy efficient structure that will survive the tempests of AGW.
Maybe it was just all talk.
Well Ender has been slack – he’s been too busy making vast amounts of loot in his busy exciting career so he can retire in style.
But blow me down and holy T rexs – a mate of mine has just done it – again after making vast amounts of wampum he seems to have built a totally self sufficient solar and wind eco-house up the Sunshine Coast and retired early – pays nothing now he’s “off the grid” and the bastard seems very happy as are the wife and kids. Into sailing too. He has that smarmy smile that really shits you – as people have been telling him for years that it wasn’t possible.
Well some of us have to man the blogs and science benches I guess.
rog – “Maybe it was just all talk.”
Is that all you have rog? No facts, no science and no clue only the last resort of insults.