BrakeBlog

Local photography, National rants, Zero navel-gazing allowed… Blogging from Hopkinsville, KY

Climate Failure

Mullins, a retired state employee, was one of seven landowners who shared $65,000 in what is believed to be the first sale of carbon credits for trees in Kentucky. That means they were paid for allowing their trees to do what comes naturally: Absorb carbon dioxide. […]

Here we have the other half of the carbon trading marketplace. The Blue Heron buys carbon credits to sooth their guilty conscience. Then that money is paid out to men like Rodney Mullins who are laughing all the way to the bank. For those who live on this planet men are paid for their time and labor but in BizarroWorld men are paid for the work they are NOT doing. When the coal plant burns fuel to produce electricity the trees will absorb it for as long as they remain alive. This mechanism has worked for a very long time without need for a government subsidy. The Blue Heron should ask why are they paying to finance another man’s lifestyle of NOT doing something.

MACED had been planning to sell credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. But carbon credits are trading very low there now as that emerging market waits to see what Congress will do about climate legislation.

Proponents say that if that legislation includes a cap-and-trade plan, it will bolster a market in which companies that put carbon into the atmosphere pay landowners for allowing their trees to absorb carbon.

Translation: The carbon credit market can’t sustain itself unless it is made mandatory by government fiat. Again I ask how does taxing carbon producers and subsidizing landowners improve the carbon absorption on the landowners’ property.


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