February 02, 2007

OINK #15 : Carbonated

Carbonated

Dr. Lenny Howdt

Online ‘Integrated’ New Kast

Carbon seems to have the focus of the whole world. The IPCC releases their report today, but couched in political correctness will be the result – we’re screwed. The time to have made corrections was long ago and now we are simply pissing into the wind.

The powers that be have an interest in retaining the status quo. Consumption of resources necessary to support the dynamic population of species is imbalance in both the plant and animal kingdoms. Climate change is creating new weather patterns as the carbon flux – the amount of carbon in redox circulation – diminishes.

The carbon viewpoint differs based on world perspective. The Financial Times is a London based newspaper that tracks European opinion on climate change with multiple daily articles. The FT perspective takes the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations treaty that the United States government has not bought. The approach involves carbon credits for activities that sequester, capture or otherwise reduce the quantity of greenhouse gasses. The credits can be sold to corporations as offsets for carbon pollution, while encouraging new technologies to capture carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. This represents a survey of articles from FT for the week of Jan 13-20, to see how carbon economics play on a world stage.

The major news was from Nicholas Stern – a former World Bank economist, who now plays a curmudgeon role. He questions whether the capture and storage technology being developed would make it onto the world scene for industry to meet the new regulatory efforts. He claims the cost should be 40% lower than currently found. Thus commerce should be constrained in a ‘carbon-neutral manner’ to fit a ‘smaller carbon footprint’. The need to replace highly polluting coal powered electric generators will be met by ‘looking to favor the nuclear power industry’.

Countries like China are already exploiting loopholes in the Kyoto treaty by creating overcapacity to scrub the most harmful greenhouse gasses, while industries like the airlines are claiming grandfathered privilege to pollute on a business as usual basis, while passing penalty costs onto travelers. Meanwhile Gazprom, the Russian oil concern, and Dresdner Bank, a German Financier swap billions of credits for cash. The UN Global Compact solicits ‘voluntary corporate citizenship’ while the average landowner is left completely out of this high level bureaucratic control system, except for the actual land controls.

The game is still loot the public – use tax incentives and real cash payments to reward polluting industries for marginal efforts as long as they endorse the command and control scheme – which limits actual carbon reductions ‘to fixing leaks and overhauling compressors’. No serious effort appears to be made to support research into alternative energy, just carbon paper games.

The state of California, with governor Arnold Schwartznegger leading the charge, is ‘strongly pushing’ reduced carbon content in fuels, calling for a 25% reduction over the next 15 years. But does anyone take any of this seriously?

1 comment:

jomama said...

While the earth farts oodles of it,
why do we hear nothing of methane, the real elephant in the room?

Who will put a cork in the planet?

Better yet, let's trap these farts then the planet will have more energy
than it can use.

Any ideas?