REDD Herring

Dying of Consumption

Just as the fossil fuel nations have already consumed the easiest oil and gas resources and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel, reaching into ever more difficult and dangerous areas, so also are we forcing our way into ever more remote places as we suck the life out of the biosphere. Concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Devising ever more cunning and devious ways of asset stripping the Earth and our fellow human beings. Destroying genuinely sustainable ways of life and replacing them with the here now, throw tomorrow uncertainty of modern Western consumer atomisation. Blaming the poor for our greed. Turning a private profit from destroying the common heritage of humanity.

Carbon Cowboys Draw Up New Plans to Eliminate Indians

REDD Monitor has produced a list of the top ten worst climate cons being perpetrated against defenceless communities in the name of "saving" the environment from the consequences of our Western fossil fuel addiction.

By way of example, a project in the Amazon region threatens the Guarani people by shutting them off from the forest that is their very means of subsistence, ignoring the fact that, as film-maker Paul Kell explains:

“These tribes are not the reason our ecosystem is being threatened, but they are now being made scapegoats and are actually going to prison for it. As is often the case, hastily (and insanely profitable) laws are put in place to appease the collective conscience, when in fact, the real criminals behind crimes against Nature are being rewarded with unheralded growth and prosperity. Such is progress.”

Not What it Says on the Tin: REDD Will Not 'Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation'

Here's a video view from the grass-roots.

Of Schemes and Schemers

Con + Insult = Consult

"There's funding available ..." Words to make any hungry consultant salivate, and as Private Eye reports in its latest issue in "REDD faces all round" the feeding frenzy is just beginning:

"There’s funding available from the World Bank to help countries draw up REDD plans, as well as assistance from some enthusiastic European nations. Most of this REDD-readiness money is ending up in the pockets of international consulting firms …"

Clever and complex schemes.

Kerching!

The new 'market', as many hipsters like to call it, in carbon credits is already creating fantastic global opportunities for business. Australian bureaucrats in charge of implementing climate change avoidance and mitigation have been warned of the "possibility of GST fraud on carbon credit trades under so-called "carousel fraud". The scam, which has operated overseas, involves the skimming of GST on the sale of carbon credits bought tax-free overseas." 

Sky Money

"The Netherlands' emissions trading authority has  [also] been the target of 'large-scale criminal activity, including fraud, money laundering and the financing of terrorism'. The Papua New Guinea "sky money" scam, involving the sale of worthless carbon credits, is also detailed in a spate of 2009 briefings."

And so it goes.