The world's leading climate scientist James Hansen wrote this in the Guardian.

Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets", a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change

 

George Monbiot

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/17/hurray-were-going-backwards/ 


The following represents pretty comprehensive proof that rather than opposing AGW, the oil companies support it and are indeed with the banks, the driving force behind it.

 

Kyoto



As many people in Kyoto suspected at the time, the reality has been very different. At the demand of the United States, the Kyoto rules were tweaked to allow rich countries to buy their way out of their targets, a move that gave birth to the multi-billion carbon trading industry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/10/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-2c


Enron Also Courted Democrats Washington Post - Kyoto

According to internal Enron documents and the recollections of former employees, Chairman Kenneth L. Lay had the ear of top Democrats in the 1980s and '90s. He and his colleagues used that access to promote the company's interests with the Clinton administration and key congressional Democrats.

In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A37287-2002Jan12&notFound=true


Washington Post - Kyoto 2

But some business groups -- especially those representing alternative energy technologies -- praised the president's plan. "This is a measured, appropriate action plan, given what we know about global warming," said Terry Thorn, senior vice president of Enron Corp. of Houston.

More than a dozen senior executives representing such companies as Nike Inc., Bechtel Group Inc. and Mitsubishi Motor Corp. have endorsed a newspaper ad running this week that calls for "strong leadership" by the United States on climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/climate/stories/clim102397.htm

Carbon trading began in response to the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 180 countries in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol, signed by 180 countries in 1997, called for 37 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2008 to 2012 to levels that are 5% lower than those of 1990. Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol established emissions trading by allowing countries that have emission units to spare (emissions permitted to them but unused) to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their emissions limits. In effect, this created a new commodity in the form of emissions and created a carbon market. Since CO2 is the principal greenhouse gas, emissions trading effectively became carbon trading. 

 http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carbon_trading#History


 


                            Fossil fuel and finance industries 


International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

The biggest lobbying group at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference was the International Emissions Trading Association which was created to promote carbon trading more than ten years ago.

Its members include :-

BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON (coal power stations owner), EDF (one of the largest participants in the global coal market), Gazprom (Russian oil and gas), Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..

http://www.ieta.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=19%3Adefault&id=168%3Aour-members&Itemid=82

Their aim

the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and ultimately climate protection;

the establishment of effective market-based trading systems for greenhouse gas emissions by businesses that are demonstrably fair, open, efficient, accountable and consistent across national boundaries; and maintaining societal equity and environmental integrity while establishing these systems.

http://www.ieta.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=19%3Adefault&id=165%3Avision&Itemid=114

 


Enron’s climate change policy as downloaded in October 2002.

http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2006/05/enronclimatechange.pdf



How about funding green infrastructure? Texas, of all places, has the strictest renewable-energy mandate in the USA - and consequently lots of windmills. And who can we thank? Enron. It lobbied Governor George W Bush hard for the measure in 1999, partly because it coveted the chance to trade carbon credits and partly because it needed to help out its loss-making windmill arm, Enron Wind. Enron was showered with plaudits from green groups for its support for alarm about climate change.

http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2009/12/start/matt-ridley-climate-alarm?page=all


BP calls for ratification of Kyoto Protocol


The multinational BP has challenged the Australian Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. BP's South Australia and Australasia president, Greg Bourne, has said that Australia's economy will suffer if the nation doesn't commit to ratifying the protocol which regulates greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s410744.htm

 

Shell Canada


The debate about climate change is over and we need to take action," says Ertel, Shell Canada's climate change expert.

here

why ?


Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade

The carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU'semissions trading scheme.

The ETS market may see $3tn (£1.8tn) worth of transactions a year in the next decade or two, according to Andrew Ager, head of emissions trading at Bache Commodities in London, with it even being used as a hedge against falling equities or rising inflation. "It is still a relatively new industry with annual trades of around €300bn every year. But this could grow to around $3tn compared to the $1.5tn market there is for oil," says Ager, who used to be a foreign currencies trader.

The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/carbon-trading-market-copenhagen-summit


Paven Sukhdev, a career banker for Deutsche Bank who now works on the issue for the UN and EU, argues that at least 65% of reductions must be made within developed countries. That means firms such as AEP may still be limited in how much they can invest in projects abroad. Firms in developing countries may not have to buy credits at all. That has led to worries in the City that there won't be enough money to buy all the forest carbon. London's financial centre is the main home to the incipient global carbon market. Prof Heal believes that in a decade, the trade could be worth trillions of dollars.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8359397.stm


Europe Can Lift UN Carbon Market From Cancun Gridlock, Gazprom Says

 

Europe needs to reinvigorate the world’s second-biggest emissions market as global climate talks to reduce greenhouse gases stall, the head of a carbon-trading unit of Russia’s OAO Gazprom said.

United Nations carbon offsets for delivery in a year fell 4 percent last week amid signals that differences between 190 developing and industrial nations may preclude a binding treaty at the climate meeting that started Nov. 29 in Cancun, Mexico.

The $2.7 billion UN Clean Development Mechanism is an offspring of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 unless governments decide to extend it. Carbon offsets generated by the CDM may be used for compliance in the European Union’s emissions-trading system, the world’s largest cap-and-trade program, also known as the EU ETS.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-06/europe-can-lift-un-carbon-market-from-cancun-gridlock-gazprom-says.html

 

 Grantham Institute for Climate Change


In fact, it (Grantham) refers to the wealthy chairman of GMO, a large investment management company: Jeremy Grantham. Grantham has donated £12million to the London School of Economics (LSE) to fund the institute. He has also forked out another £12million to Imperial College London for the similarly named Grantham Institute for Climate Change (1)

No wonder, then, that the chair of LSE, Howard Davies – once the head of the Financial Services Authority and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England – was more than a little fawning over the ‘extremely generous’ Grantham. The new LSE institute will be headed by Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the UK government-commissioned report.


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5799/


The Grantham is chaired by Professor Lord Sir Nicholas Stern of Brentford, author of a rather influential report on the economics of climate change, and who stands to profit admirably from institutional environmentalism via his carbon credit reference agency. It is no surprise that Ward and Sir Nicholas find themselves in the same company department, given their shared interests. Stern is also Chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP), which is funded by the UK government’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and which acknowledges that ‘Generous support for the Centre’s work is also provided by Munich Re’. Munich Re is the insurance giant that claims to know what the IPCC does not when it comes to the reality of climate change in the present.

 http://www.climate-resistance.org/




Jeremy Grantham


Jeremy Grantham is the Chairman of the Board of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, an American investor well known among institutional investors, but relatively unknown to retail investors. He is regarded as a highly knowledgeable investor in various stock bond and commodity markets. Grantham started one of the world's first index funds in the early 1970s and currently manages approximately $120 billion US.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Grantham


Jeremy Grantham's 2Q 2010 letter

 

Global warming will be the most important investment issue for the foreseeable future. But how to make money around this issue in the next few years is not yet clear to me. In a fast-moving fi eld rife with treacherous politics, there will be many failures. Marketing a “climate” fund would be much easier than outperforming with it.

http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_SummerEssays_2Q10.pdf

http://www.gmo.com/America/


Stern launches carbon credit ratings agency

By Fiona Harvey in London

Published: June 24 2008 20:52 | Last updated: June 24 2008 20:52

Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the UK’s Stern report on climate change, will launch a new carbon credit ratings agency on Wednesday, the first to score carbon credits on a similar basis to that used to rate debt.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/897fc1b4-4219-11dd-a5e8-0000779fd2ac.html



Putting the hippies on the payroll

Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance, by James Heartfield 


"In other words, green capitalism is not a passing fad adopted by a few corporate bosses, too spineless to stand up to the hippies; it expresses an essential feature of the social system. As Heartfield reminds us, the origins of modern environmentalism lie in the 1970s when the elite industrialists of the Club of Rome commissioned The Limits to Growth report. As the long post-war boom ended, arguing that the world was running out of resources was another way of saying that there was nothing left to redistribute, and that trade unions must settle for lower wages (p27). (Needless to say, the Club of Rome’s predictions about the exhaustion of natural resources were all confounded [p13]). 


http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2008-03/heartfield.htm


Amory Lovins' negawatt revolution in California was Enron's wet dream. Having shut down its own generation capacity, PG&E was at the mercy of Enron's market manipulation. Buying surplus electricity on the open market PG&E was royally fleeced, losing US$12 billion. Utility bills rose by nine times between May 2000 and May 2001. Enron took advantage of the restricted market and cut electricity to California. They even invented reasons to take power plants offline while California was blacked out. Enron officials joked that they were stealing one million dollars a day from California.[6] The PG&E that Lovins held up as a model went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the State of California.

James Heartfield

http://curezone.com/forums/fmp.asp?i=1691985


carbon markets 

One lesson the current financial crisis teaches us is: beware of the new carbon markets that constitute today's main official response to climate change. These markets are startlingly similar to the financial derivatives markets that have thrown banking systems into chaos and the world economy into a tailspin. 


http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

 

Carbon Capitalists Warming to Climate Market Using Derivatives 

As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Blythe Masters of JPMorgan Chase was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.

Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap. A CDS is a contract that functions like insurance by protecting debt holders against default. In 2008, after U.S. home prices plunged, the cost of protection against subprime-mortgage bond defaults jumped. Insurer American International Group Inc., which had sold billions in CDSs, was forced into government ownership, roiling markets and helping trigger the worst global recession since the 1930s.



 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aXRBOxU5KT5M

Could Cap and Trade Cause Another Market Meltdown?

You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.

Cap and trade would create what Commodity Futures Trading commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates as a $2 trillion market, "the biggest of any [commodities] derivatives product in the next five years."


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/could-cap-and-trade-cause-another-market-meltdown?page=1

 

Michelle Chan, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for Friends of the Earth, isn’t convinced.

“Should we really create a new $2 trillion market when we haven’t yet finished the job of revamping and testing new financial regulation?” she asks. Chan says that, given their recent history, the banks’ ability to turn climate change into a new commodities market should be curbed.

“What we have just been woken up to in the credit crisis -- to a jarring and shocking degree -- is what happens in the real world,” she says.

Even George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked at a London School of Economics seminar in July. “That’s why financial types like me like it -- because there are financial opportunities.”

Masters says U.S. carbon markets should be transparent and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Standardized derivatives contracts -- securities that can be bought and sold by anyone -- should be traded on exchanges or centrally cleared, she says. The British-born Masters, who has an economics degree from Cambridge University, took over JPMorgan’s commodities business in 2007


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aXRBOxU5KT5M




Carbon Credit fraud



Carbon credits bring Lakshmi Mittal £1bn bonanza


LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The scheme grants companies permits to emit CO2 up to a specified “cap”. Beyond this they must buy extra permits. An investigation has revealed that ArcelorMittal has been given far more carbon permits than it needs. It has the largest allocation of any organisation in Europe


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece 

 



Airlines 'made billions in windfall profits' from EU carbon tax


Report states carriers earned up to €1.36bn last year, despite claims that charge would impose crippling costs on industry

Airlines made windfall profits of up to £1.2bn ($1.81bn) last year from a EU carbon tax they claimed would impose crippling costs on industry, according to a report into the measure's impact on the industry.

The EU backed off on plans to charge airlines for their carbon pollution after ferocious opposition from American, Chinese, Russian and other airlines, which argued the charge would cost the industry billions. Congress passed a law last November shielding US carriers from paying the tax. The lobby group, Airlines for America, claimed at the time that the EU law would cost more than $3bn by the end of the decade.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/24/airline-windfall-profits-carbon-tax

 

UN suspends carbon-trading auditor

 

THE validity of the Kyoto Protocol’s $100 billion (£67 billion) carbon-trading scheme has been called into question after the United Nations suspended the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects.

Norway’s DNV, which claims to have approved half of the world’s carbon-credit ventures, had its accreditation suspended last month after it was unable to prove that its agents had properly vetted projects that it then approved for the carbon-trading scheme


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5375493.ece


Industries hoarding greenhouse gas emission permits

Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.

The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.

The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/11/industries-greenhouse-gas-emission-permits

#

Offices raided and 21 held as EU probe into carbon trading fraud intensifies

Denmark criticised for slow reaction after apparently being targeted in alleged 'carousel' scam


British tax authorities have arrested 21 people after raiding homes and offices across Europe as part of a crackdown on alleged carbon-trading fraud, HM Revenue & Customs confirmed today .

Some 450 staff took part in raids on Wednesday as tax authorities across the continent intensified an ongoing investigation into alleged carbon-trading fraud, which is estimated to have cost €5bn in unpaid taxes.

Deutsche Bank and energy company RWE were among 230 offices and homes raided this week by German authorities. Four arrests followed, including one in the UK under a European arrest warrant.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/01/europe-carbon-trading-alleged-fraud

The integrity of the EU's emissions trading scheme could be badly undermined unless governments resist the temptation to sell on "recycled" certified emission reduction (CERs) credits that have already been surrendered by businesses.

That is the stark warning from the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), after the Hungarian government last week agreed to sell on two million "recycled" CERs to an undisclosed intermediary.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/17/carbon-traders-recycled-credits


UN suspends carbon-trading auditor

THE validity of the Kyoto Protocol’s $100 billion (£67 billion) carbon-trading scheme has been called into question after the United Nations suspended the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects.

Norway’s DNV, which claims to have approved half of the world’s carbon-credit ventures, had its accreditation suspended last month after it was unable to prove that its agents had properly vetted projects that it then approved for the carbon-trading scheme


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5375493.ece

Treasury acts on carbon-credit fraud fears

By Vanessa Houlder

Published: July 30 2009 20:53 | Last updated: July 30 2009 20:53

 

Drastic action to stop a potential multi-billion-pound fraud was taken by the UK Treasury on Thursday when it imposed a zero rate of value added tax on carbon credits – the allowances issued as part of a scheme to help curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Losses to the exchequer so far are unlikely to have exceeded a few hundred millions pounds, but the Treasury said in a statement that “there now exists a substantiated and increasing risk of the UK becoming a major target for the fraudsters during the next few months”.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7fba19c8-7d40-11de-b8ee-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1


Environment Agency preps carbon police force Source: Jul. 6, 2009

The Environment Agency is to launch a dedicated unit to ensure that the government's imminent Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation is properly enforced.

According to The Sunday Times, around 50 auditors and inspectors will be given wide-ranging powers, including the right to search company premises, view energy meters and seize records.

Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the agency, told the newspaper that the new unit would have the necessary teeth to catch firms failing to provide accurate energy use data. 'The inspectors will carry warrant cards giving them powers of entry to collect evidence,' he said. 'We will also have access to company accounts with suppliers.'

Under the CRC, around 6,000 businesses and public-sector organisations will be required to report on annual energy use and carbon emissions from their facilities

http://water.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=31242&codi=54965&lr=1

 


****************

 


Shell Sponsorship


Mick Kelly (climategate) Shell

Quote:
SHELL INTERNATIONAL Mick Kelly and Aeree Kim (CRU, ENV) met with Robert Kleiburg (Shell International’s climate change team) on July 4th primarily to discuss access to Shell information as part of Aeree’s PhD study (our initiative) and broader collaboration through postgrad. student project placements (their initiative), but Robert was also interested in plans for the Tyndall Centre (TC). What ensued was necessarily a rather speculative discussion with the following points emerging.

1. Shell International would give serious consideration to what I referred to in the meeting as a ‘strategic partnership’ with the TC, broadly equivalent to a ‘flagship alliance’ in the TC proposal. A strategic partnership would involve not only the provision of funding but some (limited but genuine) role in setting the research agenda etc.

2. Shell’s interest is not in basic science. Any work they support must have a clear and immediate relevance to ‘real-world’ activities. They are particularly interested in emissions trading and CDM.

uea-tyndall-shell-memo.doc

http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2009/11/setting-research-agenda.html

 

Mick Kelly, from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia is quoted as saying; “Acceptance of the carbon trading provisions of the Kyoto Protocol represents an article of faith, faith in the free market and faith in the process of globalisation. It rests on an ideological stance


http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Carbon_Trading#cite_note-1

 


CRU Sponsorship

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/




Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil

But who is it that sponsors the Guardian?s Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)

And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)

And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.

And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?

And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)

And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?

Or why not try this blog, in which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?

Or how about this tiny $7o million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/



******************


Criticism of Carbon Trading

 

So BP has a representative at the top of the Earth Institute. The European Commission funds offices for Friends of the Earth and the WWF. The UK government supports climate-change research. Have the poachers turned gamekeepers? Yes - although it might be more precise to say that the bootleggers have become Baptists. Everywhere, the bootleggers can be seen walking around in black, spouting biblical prophecies of doom - and growing ever richer in the process (see box, page 37).

Bruce Yandle, an economist at Clemson University in the US, coined the phrase "bootlegger and Baptist coalitions" in an article in Regulation magazine in 1983 that discussed cases where the economic interests of businesses and the moral concerns of campaigners coincide. The idea is that both the Baptists and the bootleggers want the sale of alcohol banned - but for different reasons: Baptists because they consider alcohol to be morally wrong; bootleggers because they want to preserve their illicit enterprise.

Naturally, the Baptists would vehemently deny that they are assisting the bootleggers, just as Greenpeace and its partners in the Climate Action Network would bristle at the suggestion that they are assisting multinationals, the nuclear industry, big oil or even states' expansionist instincts. Yet often this is the effect of their campaigns.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412726&c=2



Hurray! We’re Going Backwards!

Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.


http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/17/hurray-were-going-backwards/ 

The great American bubble machine

By Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone Magazine

The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Here's how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy "allocations" or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405?page=7



Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading

An FoE reports says 'cap and trade' carbon markets have done little to reduce emissions but have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency

The world's carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another "sub-prime" style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn today.

In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date "cap and trade" carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption that render them unfit for purpose.

As the world heads towards the Copenhagen climate summit, Britain and other developed countries want to see carbon trading expanded worldwide. The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126bn in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1tn by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/05/friends-of-the-earth-attacks-carbon-trading


Greenpeace Market Poison and Carbon Trading

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/berkshire/blog/market-poison-and-carbon-trading 


The EU's carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases, it is claimed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/6720119.stm


At the moment over 90% of the licences to produce CO2 are given away to the biggest polluters. Some of these companies have made billions by passing on the nominal costs of the licences to their customers, even though they didn't have to pay anything themselves

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/12/greenpolitics-poznan

Cap and Trade WSJ


Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123655590609066021.html


Cap-and-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit

The proposed legislation would have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households. And to get political support in key states, the legislation would abandon the auctioning of permits in favor of giving permits to selected corporations.

The leading legislative proposal, the Waxman-Markey bill that was recently passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would reduce allowable CO2 emissions to 83 percent of the 2005 level by 2020, then gradually decrease the amount further. Under the cap-and-trade system, the federal government would limit the total volume of CO2 that U.S. companies can emit each year and would issue permits that companies would be required to have for each ton of CO2 emitted. Once issued, these permits would be tradable and could be bought and sold, establishing a market price reflecting the targeted CO2 reduction, with a tougher CO2 standard and fewer available permits leading to higher prices.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102077.html
















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The New Environmental Lobby


Here are some environmental organisations (with annual incomes of hundreds of millions of dollars) which are supported and controlled by the biggest banks and multi national corporations on earth. The Environmental Defense Fund claims to be the world's wealthiest environmental pressure group.



Environmental Defense Fund

Board of Trustees

Carl Ferenbach
Chair
Managing Director, Berkshire Partners, LLC

Arthur P. Cooley*
Secretary
Naturalist and former Expedition Leader, Lindblad Expeditions

G. Leonard Baker, Jr.
Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures

Rod Beckstrom
President and CEO, ICANN

James W. B. Benkard
Senior Counsel, Davis Polk & Wardwell

Sally G. Bingham, M.Div.
President, The Regeneration Project

Shelby W. Bonnie
Co-founder, CNET Networks

William K. Bowes, Jr.
Founding Partner, U.S. Venture Partners

Lewis B. Cullman
Chairman Emeritus, Chess-in-the-Schools

Ann Doerr
Philanthropist

Stanley Druckenmiller
Chairman and CEO, Duquesne Capital Management

Roger Enrico
Chairman, DreamWorks Animation, SKG; former Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc.

Kirsten J. Feldman
Former Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

Jeanne Donovan Fisher 
True Love Productions

Lynn R. Goldman, M.D., M.P.H.
Pediatrician; Professor, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Charles J. Hamilton, Jr.
Partner, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, LLP (retired)

The Honorable Thomas H. Kean
Chairman, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Arthur Kern
Investor

Sarah Liao Sau-tung, Ph.D. 
Former Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works, Hong Kong SAR Government

Frank Loy
Former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs

Susan Mandel
Community Advocate

Kathryn Murdoch
Director of Strategy and Communications, Clinton Climate Initiative

N. J. Nicholas, Jr. 
Investor

David O'Connor
Managing Partner, Creative Artists Agency

Signe Ostby
Advisor, Center for Brand and Product Management, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Director, The Intuit Scholarship Foundation

Stephen W. Pacala, Ph.D.
Petrie Professor of Biology in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Princeton University; Director of the Princeton Environmental Institute

Robert M. Perkowitz
Managing Partner, VivaTerra, LLC; President, ecoAmerica

Julian H. Robertson, Jr.
Founder and Chairman, Tiger Management, LLC

E. John Rosenwald, Jr.
Vice Chairman Emeritus, J.P. Morgan

Peggy M. Shepard
Co-founder and Executive Director, WE ACT for Environmental Justice

Douglas W. Shorenstein
Chair and CEO, Shorenstein Properties, LLC

Sam Rawlings Walton 
Boatman, Philanthropist, Entrepreneur

Paul Junger Witt
Partner, Witt Thomas Productions

Joanne Woodward
Actress, Director, Producer

Charles F. Wurster, Ph.D.*
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook

HONORARY TRUSTEES

Roland C. Clement
Gene E. Likens, Ph.D.
George G. Montgomery, Jr. 
John H. T. Wilson
George M. Woodwell, Ph.D.*

*Founding Trustees

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=365



Environmental Defense is the only environmental group named among "the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history" in the new book Forces for Good.

We also ranked first among environmental groups — and second overall — in the 2007 Financial Times global study of 850 business-nonprofit partnerships

"...the power broker rewarding good behavior"
Time Magazine

"...one of the hottest environmental groups around"
The Wall Street Journal

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=381




EDF has an annual revenue of over 100 million dollars

 http://edf.org/documents/8857_AR08_Financial_Comment.pdf



Profits of doom

The European Commission has paid environmental campaigners directly to carry out its political agenda. In 1999, at a cost of about EUR500,000, it set up a new group, the European Environmental Bureau, while also paying both the Friends of the Earth and the WWF EUR250,000 each to set up offices in Brussels. On another occasion, the Climate Action Network was given EUR140,000 for "capacity building". In fact, the Commission funnels about EUR3 million (£2.48 million) a year to environmental groups that it favours.

But that's a drop of oil in the Gulf of Mexico compared with the amounts that private foundations in the US are estimated to provide each year to environmental causes. The sums involved run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. One green organisation - the Tides Foundation - had net assets of $142,007,356 in 2006. Local green groups may rely on "flapjack and organic-soap fundraising mornings" - but real campaigns are funded by a very different and largely invisible mix.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412726&c=2


Enough is enough. The Greenpeace fraud about saving the whales must be exposed. For years, I have been tolerating their pretense of action and watching them rake in tremendous profits from whaling.Greenpeace makes more money from anti-whaling than Norway and Iceland combined make from whaling. In both cases, the whales die and someone profits.

...

Their success according to Melanie will depend on YOU sending a donation NOW. She's right, of course. The Greenpeace campaign is not about looking for whaling ships. Success to Greenpeace is about recruiting memberships.

http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/editorial-061220-1.html



Greenpeace funding

Greenpeace even has a website that "exposes" donations of Exxon/Esso to various U.S. think-tanks. What Greenpeace does not expose, is that its own funding comes fromextremely right-wing sources -- take a look at these donations to Greenpeace USA and the very conservative, reactionary people behind them.

No doubt this is why so many of the policies and programmes of "environmentalism" are so close to those of neofascist political parties. As the British National Party (British neofascists) says, "we are the true green party

screenshot

http://bp0.blogger.com/_X93w7bCMCS8/SIs31W9yxNI/AAAAAAAAAEw/qfuD8yilzSU/s320/Greenpeace+financials.jpg

http://badecology.blogspot.com/2008/07/greenpeace-funding.html

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_financials_full.cfm/oid/131



The Climate Group

http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/our_partners/supporters/

http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/our_partners/

Climate Group on Sourcewatch

http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=The_Climate_Group



NRDC (The Natural Resources Defense Council)

NRDC is the nation's most effective environmental action organization. We use law, science and the support of 1.2 million members and online activists to protect the planet's wildlife and wild places and to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all living things.

Worth Magazine has named NRDC one of America's 100 best charities, and the Wise Giving Alliance of the Better Business Bureau reports that NRDC meets its highest standards for accountability and use of donor funds.

http://www.nrdc.org/about/board.asp

The NDRC has an annual revenue of 87 million dollars

 http://www.nrdc.org/about/finances.asp

Paulson plans to donate £410m fortune to environmental causes

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, is believed to be planning to give away the bulk of his fortune to charity - up to $800m (£410m).

The move would see him follow in the footsteps of a string of wealthy businessmen, including Microsoft's founder Bill Gates and investment guru Warren Buffett, who have all announced plans to donate the vast proportion of their wealth to good causes over the past year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/paulson-plans-to-donate-163410m-fortune-to-environmental-causes-432346.html


This is pure Orwellian corporate speak


E3G is organised around a permanent strategic conversation which identifies the critical actions required to accelerate change, and the political, economic, technical and cultural conditions needed to drive it. This combines the expertise of all E3G staff in the development of compelling strategic insights and narratives which shape our interventions.


 http://www.e3g.org/index.php/about/What-we-do/



COIN

According to the profile on CiF, "George Marshall is the founder and director of projects at the Climate Outreach and Information Network. He posts regularly to the blog climatedenial.org"

This set me digging.I discovered that COIN was a registered charity, so my next port of call was the Charity Commission, to have a look at their accounts.

None have yet been filed, as the organisation is newly registered: Mem and Arts were incorporated on 21st December 2007 and they were registered with the Charity Commission on 26th March 2008 (though according to their own website they were founded in 2004).

Its charitable objects are listed on the Charity Commission website as "to promote any charitable purposes at the discretion of the trustees concerning climate change and its impact".

Their objects look rather more political on their "about us" page. The contact was listed as a Mr Tim Baster of Oxford.  Additionally there are two trustees.

Googling Mr Baster's name came up trumps.  The buggers are getting close on £700,000 from DEFRA over two years.

According to DEFRA's press release this is to "profoundly change the attitude of rank and file union members; generating visible collective reduction action, establishing a social norm for personal action, and creating a persuasive synergy and cross over between personal action, work-placed programmes such as 'Greening the workplace', and the emissions reduction targets of employers."

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/25/whos-been-spinning-in-my-newspaper.html

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Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading. 

In a recently published paper, Trading Emissions, for the Social Market Foundation, Mr Linnett argues that the International problem of climate change demands an international solution. 

Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and regulated.

"An urgent global response." This was how Nicolas Stern described the problem of carbon dioxide emissions, in his recent review of the economics of climate change. The sense of an impending crisis infuses our all debates on this issue.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14294 

Cooling on Global Warming

Germany and the rest of Europe are getting more rational on climate change

The EU climate deal was diluted beyond recognition. Instead of standing by plans to cut CO2 emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, the actual reductions might be as trivial as 4% if all exemptions are factored in.

Second, disillusionment with the failed Kyoto Protocol has turned utopian thinking into sobriety. After all, most of the Kyoto signatories failed to reduce their CO2 emissions during the last 10 years. There are also growing doubts about the long-term viability of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme

The inclusion of a revision clause, pushed by Italy, is particularly significant as it makes the EU's climate targets conditional on the outcome of international climate talks. If the U.N.'s Copenhagen conference in 2009 fails to seal a post-Kyoto deal, it is as good as certain that some of the EU's targets will be further cut. By linking its decisions to those of the rest of the world, Europe has begun to act as a more rational player on the stage of international climate diplomacy.


 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122937766062908297.html



After watching An Inconvenient Truth and sitting through one of Al Gore's PowerPoint presentations, I have just one question remaining: Why is Al Gore pushing Enron's agenda?

Before you decide that I'm delusional, check out my new book, The Big Ripoff : How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, and my section called "Green: The Color of Money." The book shows how Enron was a key lobbyist for the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (the Holy Grail of Gore's Crusade), and how almost every environmentalist policy we are being fed by Washington is really a meal ticket for one big business or another.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-carney/follow-the-money-in-wash_b_25017.html


Germany Plans Boom in Coal-Fired Power Plants -- Despite High Emissions

Estimates by climate protection experts such as Rainer Baake from German Environment Aid (DUH) suggest the new power plants will release at least 150 million tons of CO2 every year.

 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,472786,00.html



Train can be worse for climate than plane 

"New rail systems should serve as links to other transit modes, as is often the case in Europe and Japan," he says. "We should avoid building rail systems that are disconnected from major population areas and require car trips and parking to access."



 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17260-train-can-be-worse-for-climate-than-plane.html 

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8089722.stm 

Fox admitting to inserting global warming propaganda into TV shows.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=47149952

This week, an independent panel of experts called the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published the details of its recent advice to Parliament that the UK should reduce its CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

There's no doubt there's money to be made from this new legislation, which was passed last week. A recent conference, given the title 'Cashing in on Carbon' was, in its own words, "aimed squarely at investment banks, investors and major compliance buyers and is focused on how they can profit today from an increasingly diverse range of carbon-related investment opportunities".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/climate_change_committee_double_standards/



Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals

In the worst case scenario, sustainable energy plants might even have a detrimental effect on the climate. As more wind turbines go online, coal plants will be able to reduce their output. This in itself is desirable -- but the problem is that the total number of available CO2 emission certificates remains the same. In other words, there will suddenly be more certificates per kilowatt of coal energy. That means the price per ton of CO2 emitted will fall.

That is exactly what happened in recent trading. A certificate to emit a ton of CO2 cost almost nothing. As a result, there was very little incentive for big energy companies to invest in climate friendly technologies.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,606763,00.html



‘There’s a lot of rich people backing this cause’, says Horner. ‘Al Gore has just raised $300million. Over the past few years, the greens continue to say we receive Exxon Mobil support – and we do not. But where did Al Gore get $300million, far more than the entire sceptic community has received ever from any source? No one seems to care. How much of this is from George Soros? How much of it is from his buddies at the venture capital companies that are invested in a bunch of dogs-with-fleas that won’t be at all attractive until this regime is put in place? We don’t know – and we don’t have a curious media or state.’

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/5956/



More on Enron






The oil companies were members of an anti global warming organisation called the Global Change Coalition until just before Kyoto was signed . Many jumped ship after the Americans managed to insert cap and trade into article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol on ther insistence of Enron and BP, even though the Senate was complete against it and voted 95-0 against ratification. The Global Change Coalition eventually disbanded in 2000, four years before Kyoto was ratified.

Opposing Views on Global Warming: The Corporate Climate Coup

by Prof. David F. Noble - York University, Toronto, Canada

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5568

Enron: The Godfather of Kyoto - How Enron hyped global warming for profit

As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this was simple; just look at the recent issue of Scientific American where four attack dogs were called out to chew up Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish The Skeptic Environmentalist demonstrating that global warming is overblown. David Bellamy, the world’s foremost environmentalist also stepped out of line with his widely printed article “Global Warming? What a load of old Poppycock.” In the same way Galileo was forced to publicly utter that the moon had no effect on tides, so Bellamy under pressure backtracked on some of his claims.

http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html

But some business groups -- especially those representing alternative energy technologies -- praised the president's plan. "This is a measured, appropriate action plan, given what we know about global warming," said Terry Thorn, senior vice president of Enron Corp. of Houston.

More than a dozen senior executives representing such companies as Nike Inc., Bechtel Group Inc. and Mitsubishi Motor Corp. have endorsed a newspaper ad running this week that calls for "strong leadership" by the United States on climate change.



In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."




The climate-industrial complex - Wall Street journal

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html

Money and Kyoto Protocol are the real Enron story

Enron executives worked closely with the Clinton administration to secure support for the Kyoto Protocol because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a financial windfall. An internal Enron memo circulated immediately after the 1997 Kyoto meeting - and first reported by The Washington Post - shows the company believed the treaty "would do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

So Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to reduce so-called global warming. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose "Climate Change" project promotes global warming theories.


 http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2002/Feb/20020226Comm007.asp


BP too

An August 4, 1997 Oval Office meeting with Kenny Boy, (then-) Sir John Browne of BP, and the President and Vice President of the United States. Let that sink in. He didn’t know the guy. But anyone who can even spell “Beltway” can tell you that that kind of orchestration and attention takes serious influence. Ask Gordon Brown.

As revealed by the August 1, 1997 Kenny Boy briefing memo subsequently aired after the unpleasantness, in this meeting Kenny Boy was to demand that the Senate be ignored, that the administration agree to Kyoto, and most important that it contain a cap-and-trade scheme

http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/04/28/gores-inconvenient-enron/






Whatever its impact on the environment, the cap-and-trade carbon scheme is sure to boost the economic and political prospects of people and groups that are behind it. Before the company collapsed under the weight of financial scandal, Enron under CEO Ken Lay was a key proponent of the cap-and-trade idea. So was BP’s Lord John Browne, before he resigned last May under a cloud of personal scandal. In August 1997, Lay and Browne met with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Gore in the Oval Office to develop administration positions for the Kyoto negotiations that resulted in an international treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. 

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663


Wall Street Extorts Kyoto Protocol: Lehman, Enron and other Cap-and-Trade Coincidences

When Enron’s drama unfolded in 2001, the pressure group for rent-seeking businesses called the Pew Center on Global Climate Change quickly airbrushed its Web site of praise for the company, specifically Pew’s erstwhile poster boy for climate “responsibility,” Ken Lay. Lay and Enron were founders of Pew’s Business Environmental Leadership Council, a green-tinted coalition that was pushing the Kyoto agenda.

Lay was also a favorite and longtime trustee at a similar outfit known as the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment (run by John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz). An embarrassing e-mail emerged in which Heinz staff pleaded with Lay, “Simply stated, your background, expertise and experience make you uniquely qualified [to run our] global-warming [initiative].”

This was a sufficiently serious endeavor that soon after I left Enron in 1997, Lay and BP boss John Browne met in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Lay’s briefing memo reveals that they clarified what Enron needed from the treaty at the upcoming December Kyoto negotiations. Just the week before, a unanimous U.S. Senate had voted instructing Clinton not to agree to the pact.

The rest is history, if often misreported. The Clinton administration disregarded the Senate and agreed to Kyoto on December 11, 1997, and signed it – yes, signed it – on November 12, 1998. Score: Lay and Browne 1, Senate 0. However, then as now, and every year in the interim, the Senate has refused to bind the U.S. to such an agreement.

With that bit of history out of the way and as Lehman Brothers lies in ruins, let us take notice of certain coincidences. For example, as Lehman melted down, observers spotted the web of climate-specific similarities connecting that company’s priorities and activism and Enron’s. Like Enron, the bank was a strong promoter of carbon pricing, and its recommendations on the subject had begun to be adopted by governments around the world. Lehman was also the banker for Gore’s private equity firm, Generation Investment Management.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1023&idli=3 

While that was happening, Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: "[T]he very real possibility that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed."

One of Enron's major consultants in that study was NASA scientists James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Last month, he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same, inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA.


 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3388



Enron: The Godfather of Kyoto

In addition, Enron began to cultivate new friends in the environmental community. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation gave nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promoted global warming theories. Another $1.5 million was donated to other groups advocating international controls to curb global warming, including Greenpeace.

In 1997, Enron set about to promote an international treaty to impose cuts in CO2 emissions while allowing emission rights trading. Such an agreement would produce a gigantic windfall for Enron because it would boost the usage of natural gas at the expense of coal and it would help Enron’s growing commodity trading business.

As the push for a treaty gained more support around the world, Enron CEO Ken Lay and other business leaders wrote to President Bill Clinton on September 1, 1998, asking him to create a bipartisan blue ribbon commission that would essentially shut off the scientific debate on global warming and discredit those scientists who opposed the treaty and did not support the global warming theory.

Simultaneously, Enron commissioned an internal study of global warming science, only to find the results did not support the theory. In conclusion, the report noted, “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.”A primary consultant for that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, the very same scientist who now castigates the Bush administration for its stance on Kyoto and who trashes scientists who dispute global warming as being in the hip pocket of big business. That certainly did not keep Mr. Hansen from cashing Enron’s check.

Ring’s investigation, as reported in Investigate magazine, notes that “…coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices.”


 http://www.theforgottenstreet.com/index.php?action=website-view&WebPageID=15046&WebSiteID=444




Investigate Oct 05, The Kyoto Conspiracy - How Enron hyped global warming for profit


Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.” One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA.

True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today – the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion. Some greenie campaigning in America is still directed from this source. On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the scandal.

Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference.
”Enron stood to profit millions from global warming energy-trading schemes,” said Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association and American Coal Coalition. The investigation into the collapse of Enron will reveal much more about the intricacies of the Baptist-bootlegger coalition which was promoting the Kyoto cause within the Republican Party and within US business circles. Coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going – from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices. If the Kyoto Protocol were ratified and in full force, experts estimated that Americans would lose between $100 billion and $400 billion each year. Additionally, between 1 and 3.5 million jobs could be lost. That means that each household could lose an average of up to $6,000 each year. That is a lot to ask of Americans just so large energy companies can pocket millions from a regulatory scheme. Moreover, a cost of $400 billion annually makes Enron’s current one-time loss of $6 billion look like pocket change. Little wonder Americans and the incoming Bush administration did not want a bar of it. 


 http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html





Exxon



Exxon supports carbon tax


 http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/calgarybusiness/story.html?id=e8aecbbb-16c6-412d-8054-7e64e2b176ef


IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares periodic climate assessments on science, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation based on the contributions of several hundred expert authors nominated by governments. The majority of experts work in academia and government labs, but a handful work in business, including Haroon Kheshgi and Brian Flannery from ExxonMobil. Over the years, they have contributed to three IPCC assessments and two special reports and have served as review editors for IPCC publications. The valuable contributions of these experts were recognized, when the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx

There is increasing evidence that the earth's climate has warmed on average about 0.7 C in the last century. Many global ecosystems, especially the polar areas, are showing signs of warming. CO2 emissions have increased during this same time period - and emissions from fossil fuels and land use changes are one source of these emissions.

Climate remains today an extraordinarily complex area of scientific study. The risks to society and ecosystems from increases in CO2 emissions could prove to be significant, it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks, keeping in mind the central importance of energy to the economies of the world.

This includes putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions, while understanding the context of managing carbon emissions among other important world priorities, such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health.

While this long term objective is pursued, near term objectives should include supporting climate research to reduce uncertainties while pacing policy responses; promoting energy efficiency; deploying existing technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and supporting research and development of new, low-GHG technologies. 

Policymakers are considering a variety of proposed regulatory options to mitigate GHG emissions. In our view, assessing these options requires an understanding of their likely effectiveness, scale and cost, as well as their implications for economic growth and quality of life. Within ExxonMobil, we analyze and compare the various policy options by evaluating the degree to which they: 

• maximize the use of market forces
• ensure a uniform and predictable cost of reducing CO2
• promote global participation
• minimize complexity and administrative costs
• provide transparency to companies and consumers
• adjust to new developments in climate science and the economic impacts of policies

ExxonMobil scientists have undertaken climate change research and related policy analysis for 25 years and their work has produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature. In addition, our scientists participate in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Europe-English/Citizen/Eu_VP_climate.asp

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EDF Energy will scale down plans to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in the UK unless the government fixes the price of carbon, its chief executive, Vincent de Rivaz, has warned.

De Rivaz said that EDF's business case to build four new reactors depended on a carbon tax or minimum carbon price being introduced.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/05/edf-nuclear-power-energy 

The rise in price is apparently caused by speculation due to changes in American trading laws that permit (amongst other things) the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), to use its terminals to trade U.S. crude oil futures, gasoline and heating oil contracts. Supply is actually greater than demand but oil is being horded (some have said by oil companies).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/enron_and_todays_oil_and_gas_p.html

Britain's dirty business

These four projects are among the most environmentally damaging on the planet. So why is a British government department backing them?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3666273.ece

BP Climate

http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9015577&contentId=7031715

BP CEO Lord Browne's Speech (Pew Foundation)

We’ve shown that it is possible to reduce emissions of methane and CO2 from our own operations – by eliminating waste and leaks and by applying technology, for instance to eliminate the venting of methane.

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/bp_amoco/browne.cfm

Carbon's Power Brokers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002521_pf.html



Czech President Vaclav Klaus

We have to repeatedly deal with the simple questions that have been many times discussed here and elsewhere:

1) Is there a statistically significant global warming?

2) If so, is it man-made?

3) If we decide to stop it, is there anything a man can do about it?

4) Should an eventual moderate temperature increase bother us?

We have our answers to these questions and are fortunate to have many well-known and respected experts here who have made important contributions in answering them. Yet, I am not sure this is enough. People tend to blindly believe in the IPCC’s conclusions (especially in the easier to understand formulations presented in the “Summaries for Policymakers”) despite the fact that from the very beginning, the IPCC has been a political rather than a scientific undertaking.

http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=XpAV39wT4A32

BP gave $500 million to UC Berkeley to develop new sources of energy.

 http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml


ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project.


 http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_actions_gcep.aspx

addressing the risks of climate change: ExxonMobil's views and actions

 http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx


The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria (alex ones)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/130207globalwarming.htm

Czech president derogates UN global-warming panel

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Czech_president_derogates_UN_global_02092007.html

***************************************

Pew Foundation and global warming
 http://www.pewtrusts.com/ideas/index.cfm?issue=19



This right wing piece is complaining about the Pew Founation unaware they are owned by the aforemention ed oil company fascists (literally).

 http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html



The story was rooted in a recent study by Tom Wigley, introduced as "a respected climatologist." Wigley's study was financed by the Pew Foundation, which is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to hype global warming. 

 http://www.pewclimate.org/



The Pew family (Sun Ol)

Pew - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism
 http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/pew.html



Climate Change Speech 
By John Browne, Group [b]Chief Executive, British Petroleum[/b] (BP America)

 http://dieoff.org/page106.htm



"But there is now an effective consensus among the world's leading scientists and serious and well informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate, and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature. 

The prediction of the IPCC is that over the next century temperatures might rise by a further 1 to 3.5 degrees centigrade, and that sea levels might rise by between 15 and 95 centimetres. Some of that impact is probably unavoidable, because it results from current emissions. "



Exxon

For our part, ExxonMobil is taking action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions today and to support the development of advanced energy technologies with the potential to significantly reduce future emissions. These include:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/energynow_savingenergy.asp

ExxonMobil is committed to consistent, comprehensive reporting of greenhouse gas emissions

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project – the largest-ever independent climate and energy research.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/climate_view.asp

http://www2.exxonmobil.com/corporate/Campaign/Campaign_energysaving_research.asp

Clean tech: Green energy is the modern gold rush

Alternative power Investors are falling over themselves to put cash into the search for cleaner fuels

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/02/renewableenergy.carbonemissions

The EU's carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases, it is claimed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/6720119.stm

The rise in price is apparently caused by speculation due to changes in American trading laws that permit (amongst other things) the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), to use its terminals to trade U.S. crude oil futures, gasoline and heating oil contracts. Supply is actually greater than demand but oil is being horded (some have said by oil companies).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/enron_and_todays_oil_and_gas_p.html

Britain's dirty business

These four projects are among the most environmentally damaging on the planet. So why is a British government department backing them?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3666273.ece

BP Climate

http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9015577&contentId=7031715

BP CEO Lord Browne's Speech (Pew Foundation)

We’ve shown that it is possible to reduce emissions of methane and CO2 from our own operations – by eliminating waste and leaks and by applying technology, for instance to eliminate the venting of methane.

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/bp_amoco/browne.cfm

Carbon's Power Brokers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002521_pf.html

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

http://www.pewclimate.org/about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Center_on_Global_Climate_Change

The Pew Charitable Trusts

http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work.aspx?category=112

The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by the adult children of Sun Oil Companyfounder Joseph N Pew.

Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust had as its mission to "acquaint the American people with 'the evils of bureaucracy' and 'the values of a free market' and 'to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won.'" Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs."[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pew_Charitable_Trusts

The Plot to Sieze the White House by Jules Archer - pews

http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html

Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC) Member Companies (pew)

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/



BP gave $500 million to UC Berkeley to develop new sources of energy.

 http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml


ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project.


 http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_actions_gcep.aspx

addressing the risks of climate change: ExxonMobil's views and actions

 http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx

The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria (alex ones)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/130207globalwarming.htm

Czech president derogates UN global-warming panel

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Czech_president_derogates_UN_global_02092007.html

***************************************

Pew Foundation and global warming
 http://www.pewtrusts.com/ideas/index.cfm?issue=19



This right wing piece is complaining about the Pew Founation unaware they are owned by the aforemention ed oil company fascists (literally).

 http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html



The story was rooted in a recent study by Tom Wigley, introduced as "a respected climatologist." Wigley's study was financed by the Pew Foundation, which is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to hype global warming. 

 http://www.pewclimate.org/



The Pew family (Sun Ol)

Pew - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism
 http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/pew.html



Climate Change Speech 
By John Browne, Group [b]Chief Executive, British Petroleum[/b] (BP America)

 http://dieoff.org/page106.htm



"But there is now an effective consensus among the world's leading scientists and serious and well informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate, and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature. 

The prediction of the IPCC is that over the next century temperatures might rise by a further 1 to 3.5 degrees centigrade, and that sea levels might rise by between 15 and 95 centimetres. Some of that impact is probably unavoidable, because it results from current emissions. "



Exxon

For our part, ExxonMobil is taking action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions today and to support the development of advanced energy technologies with the potential to significantly reduce future emissions. These include:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/energynow_savingenergy.asp

ExxonMobil is committed to consistent, comprehensive reporting of greenhouse gas emissions

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project – the largest-ever independent climate and energy research.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/climate_view.asp

http://www2.exxonmobil.com/corporate/Campaign/Campaign_energysaving_research.asp

Why are the massive global corporations and banks who promote global warming investing enormous amounts of capital in India and China where there are no environmental controls ? Why do they want billions Indian, Chinese and other developing world workers to buy cars and pour out massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Why do they want Americans and Europeans to save pennies a week on long life light bulbs when the investment banks are paying for a new coal power station every week in India and the same in China ?



 http://www.theclimategroup.org/about/members_and_partners/associates



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