Comments on: Climate aid to developing nations: what’s in it for us? http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/25/climate-aid-to-developing-nations-whats-in-it-for-us/ now with extra source Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:16:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Roger Clifton http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/25/climate-aid-to-developing-nations-whats-in-it-for-us/#comment-38833 Roger Clifton Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:56:13 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/25/climate-aid-to-developing-nations-whats-in-it-for-us/#comment-38833 The concept of offsets is inherently corrupt. Anyone proposing to offset emissions has to evade the question of where the carbon dioxide is going to go that that would not have otherwise received carbon dioxide. I defy any reader to describe an under-active sink for carbon that is capable of accepting millions of tonnes of extra carbon dioxide and keeping it there - above quota - for many thousands of years. They simply don't exist. Salesman may make vague word pictures of vast areas of naked, arable land, unused by farmers, forest or fodder, in a strange land, far, far away. You might ask them for hard figures of how much area is to be used, how much carbon dioxide is already cycling through that land, how much more it can be made to sequester, and how many millennia that the land and its extra carbon will be preserved against fire, decay or reuse. When you are fobbed off with nonsense, you will know that the offset scheme is fraudulent. Proponents of offset schemes should be lampooned. We are our comedians when we need them? The concept of offsets is inherently corrupt.

Anyone proposing to offset emissions has to evade the question of where the carbon dioxide is going to go that that would not have otherwise received carbon dioxide. I defy any reader to describe an under-active sink for carbon that is capable of accepting millions of tonnes of extra carbon dioxide and keeping it there - above quota - for many thousands of years. They simply don’t exist.

Salesman may make vague word pictures of vast areas of naked, arable land, unused by farmers, forest or fodder, in a strange land, far, far away. You might ask them for hard figures of how much area is to be used, how much carbon dioxide is already cycling through that land, how much more it can be made to sequester, and how many millennia that the land and its extra carbon will be preserved against fire, decay or reuse. When you are fobbed off with nonsense, you will know that the offset scheme is fraudulent.

Proponents of offset schemes should be lampooned. We are our comedians when we need them?

]]> By: Robert Barwick http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/25/climate-aid-to-developing-nations-whats-in-it-for-us/#comment-38830 Robert Barwick Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:51:51 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/25/climate-aid-to-developing-nations-whats-in-it-for-us/#comment-38830 What's in it for them? Talk about a poisoned chalice: "Here, have some $, but only if you don't develop and raise your living standard and life expectancy. Can't really have any of that nasty CO2 I'm pumping out at a rate of 30,000 ppm whilst I'm telling you this, can we? What? You're not to keen on that? Well, you don't really have a choice, do you? Globalisation has taken the world full circle back to colonialism--you do what we say." Thanks for exposing the hypocrisy in the way aid is delivered, Bernard, but let's not pretend that this particular form of aid is intended to help them in the first place. What’s in it for them? Talk about a poisoned chalice: “Here, have some $, but only if you don’t develop and raise your living standard and life expectancy. Can’t really have any of that nasty CO2 I’m pumping out at a rate of 30,000 ppm whilst I’m telling you this, can we? What? You’re not to keen on that? Well, you don’t really have a choice, do you? Globalisation has taken the world full circle back to colonialism — you do what we say.” Thanks for exposing the hypocrisy in the way aid is delivered, Bernard, but let’s not pretend that this particular form of aid is intended to help them in the first place.

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