Carbon trading scams fight with forests while US wage slaves slumber

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• Logs that were illegally cut from Amazon rainforest lie abandoned on a ranch near the Amazon River, February 28, 2008. photo by reuters

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - 3/30/09: "Carbon market prices could tumble by 75 percent if credits for safeguarding forests are added to markets for industrial emissions, environmental group Greenpeace said on Monday.

• A report issued on the sidelines of U.N. talks in Bonn working on a climate treaty said that a flood of forest carbon credits could also slow the fight against global warming and divert billions of dollars from investments in clean technology.

"Cheap forest credits sound attractive but a closer examination shows they are a dangerous option," Roman Czebiniak, Greenpeace International political adviser on forests, said of estimates by Kea 3 economic modeling group in New Zealand.

• About 175 nations are meeting in Bonn from March 29-April 8 to discuss measures for fighting global warming. Among them are ways to slow
  
• tropical deforestation, which accounts for a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they are burned or rot. Placing a price on intact trees could help save forests from the Amazon to the Congo basin from logging and land clearance by farmers.

"Including forest protection measures in carbon markets would crash the price of carbon by up to 75 percent and derail global efforts to tackle global warming," Greenpeace said.

The report projected the 75 percent fall in prices, to 3.9 euros ($5.16) per tonne by 2020 from a baseline of 16.05 used in the report, under current national policies for limiting emissions.

CLEAN ENERGY INVESTMENTS

"Countries like China, India and Brazil could lose tens of billions of dollars for clean energy investments if forest protection measures are included in an unrestricted carbon market," it added.

• There is so far no agreement on how to put a price on forest carbon under a new treaty. Suggestions range from carbon trading to new taxes in developed nations to raise cash. Governments aim to agree a new U.N. climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.

• A European Commission report last year also said the European Union should not let industry meet its climate goals by funding forest conservation in tropical nations before 2020.

"Allowing companies to buy avoided deforestation credits would result in serious imbalances between supply and demand," it said. It said deforestation emissions were three times bigger than emissions regulated by the EU emissions trading scheme.

• And New Carbon Finance analyst Aimie Parpia estimated in a report earlier this month that unlimited use of forestry could cut carbon offset prices by 40 percent by 2020.

Greenpeace's own forest proposal is to allow industrialized countries to meet a part of their emissions reduction goals by buying cheaper "tropical deforestation units" as an addition to deep cuts in domestic emissions.

These units, however, would not be tradeable on markets for industrial emissions." via Lucianne.com

• THE AVERAGE AMERICAN DOESN'T BEGIN TO HAVE THE TIME TO KEEP UP WITH GLOBAL CRIMINALS--in concert with most elected officials in the Beltway-- ROBBING THEIR OWN HOUSE FROM THEM WHILE THEY WORK THEMSELVES TO DEATH. sm

Spengler reviews the book, 'American Babylon'

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• George Bush's dissociated mumbling at a time when America was hanging by a thread, showed he cared nothing for Americans. He glossed over us, trashing our hard-fought for way of life, eased the way for lobbyists and profiteers in the sub-prime scandal, UN corruption, fake global warming, illegal aliens, disease and squalor previously seen in third world cesspools. He greased the skids for the final nail in the US coffin, the Obama group. As bad as Bush was, Obama is of course, much worse. (sm)

(Spengler): "This is painfully clear, observes Neuhaus (American Babylon), in George W Bush's second inaugural address:

We are led [Bush said in his address] by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of

• liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the

• expansion of freedom in all the world. America's vital interest and our

deepest beliefs are now one ... We go forward with complete confidence in the even triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills.

"Both the power and the danger of the story is in the sincerity with which it is told," Neuhaus commented.

• "Good intentions go awry; we blind ourselves to our own capacity for self-deception when we cast ourselves in the role of God's agents in history's battle between The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, to cite the title of [a] book by [Reinhold] Niebuhr."

Bush's second inaugural was an exercise in American self-worship, in its assumption that the free institutions of the United States were an earthly

• manifestation of the divine, such that the American government should become a Bureau of Missions for the cult of democracy.

• But it is manifestly false that America's security depends upon the success of freedom elsewhere.

China's political system is not free by Western standards, yet China poses no strategic threat to the United States. Dictatorships that support terrorism well may constitute a strategic threat to the United States, especially if they are able to employ nuclear weapons. But the United States could just as well wipe all of them off the face of the Earth through pre-emptive nuclear bombardment, or let them fight each other to exhaustion, as try to foster democracy in their midst.

• America had no strategic imperative to promote democracy, only a narcissistic one."...

It was actually a monetary one in this case. The money, the no-bid contracts, etc. that were handed out for all these foreign projects, it was Bush's intention all along. He rewarded those who financed his election, as Obama is doing today. (sm)

'MEDIA HOPELESSLY DIVIDED': The speech of RUSH LIMBAUGH

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(Andrew Breitbart): "Fox News joined C-SPAN in carrying the nearly hour-and-a-half experience, while CNN broke ranks with the "mainstream media" and aired most of the speech as well.

• It was an address that could have altered the election
  

• had it been delivered early last fall by any Republican presidential candidate.

About midway through Mr. Limbaugh's clear-headed, timely and sometimes rambunctious call to ideological arms, my BlackBerry began buzzing with elated text messages from across the Omni and across the nation.

• A friend in Los Angeles e-mailed a one-liner: "Best speech I have ever seen."

My urbane father-in-law, the first person I knew who copped to listening to Mr. Limbaugh and who has been witness to most of the big events of the modern age, called it the "most thrilling thing [he's] seen on TV."...

• Spokespeople for CPAC said it was the best-received speech in the conference's 36 years. And that included Ronald Reagan, who, by the way, was no rhetorical slouch.

By any measure, Mr. Limbaugh hit the ball out of the park. He may have done so for the team that, these days, many people are rooting against. But the ball did land over the fence.

• On the other hand, the "drive-by media" - as Mr. Limbaugh aptly refers to his business competition and ideological foes -
  

• portrayed a completely different event.

Clearly taking their cues from Mr. Obama - as well as Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - the Fourth Estate, without the benefit of a Frank Luntz focus group or an instant poll,

• immediately labeled the speech as "angry" and alienating to "moderate voters."

The netroots, the mainstream media's devious protector from its left flank (e.g., the Huffington Post, Media Matters and the Daily Kos) also opined

• as if they had witnessed a hate crime.

Anonymous liberal commentators, the rabid pests of the new media, sought out the most popular conservative blogs to flood the zone

• with familiar Rush Limbaugh slanders.
  
• Their goal:
  

• To demoralize the right with
  
• layer upon layer of media domination.
  

Only talk radio with its emphasis on Socratic debate over raw emotionalism

• and with Mr. Limbaugh in the driver's seat
  

• has escaped the left's clutches of pure media dominance.
  

For years, the radio kin of these underhanded online annoyances - coined by Rush as "seminar callers" - have read their Democratic National Committee-produced scripts to muddy the political waters.

• Talk-show call screeners will be on double duty this week trying to keep off the air anyone who might try to tear down the post-speech unity and elation.

For more than a generation, the traditional media has tried to build a wall around public sentiment

• to protect the Democratic Party
  
• from articulate critics.
  

Recent election cycles and the emergence of the Internet have only exacerbated the situation. In the past year, media bias has gotten out of hand.

• But it has not been able to stop that mountain
  
• we call Rush.
  

He is much more than an entertainer or a person who can "motivate the base" - as the media repeats like cheap talking points.

He has the uncanny ability to expose

• the intricate web of bias to those who do not yet know that they
  
• should doubt the media's sincerity.
  

Many in the Regency Ballroom on Saturday night were once dupes or elitists like me who were shown the light by a guy who didn't even graduate college.

• With newspapers long ago judged as far gone on the left
  

• and television networks turned off for good by enraged customers,
  

• the media has good reason to hate Mr. Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh is the man who is most to blame for their demise. No wonder they bad-mouth him every chance they get." Washington Times