Tyranny by treaty

Every trade association in the United States is attempting to understand what carbon trading and taxation will mean for its constituents. And while some are standing by hoping to receive subsidies from the scheme, many are concerned we are heading in the wrong direction.

At the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen last December, 40,000 protestors, 30,000 delegates and 100 world leaders slept in flophouses and four-star hotels. They rented 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets. The US delegation consisted of 200 people, not including President Obama’s massive entourage of 500.

In just 14 days, this one UN conference spewed 40,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - more than that produced annually by 60 of the world’s smallest economies!

It is estimated that, over the last 20 years, climate change has sucked up $80 billion in US taxpayer funds. So one must ask, “Did they really all have to go?”

UN Project #1901

To mitigate all the hot air produced at this one UN meeting, a UN treaty and the EU law force Denmark’s citizens to buy 40,000 tons worth of UN-certified emission reductions (UNCERs) at a cost of $700,000. Annually, Denmark purchases another 115,000 tons worth of UNCERs for $2 million a year. All of Denmark’s UNCERs are bought from UN Project #1901.

Project #1901 is 100 acres of new brick-making businesses in Bangladesh. At current rates, over the 20-year lifespan of these brickfields, Denmark will transfer $40 million in mitigation fees to Project #1901. Bangladesh carbon marketers have announced that this price will double, bringing the total of this “developed to developing country” transfer to $80 million over 20 years.

It cost only $9 million to build Project #1901, with an $11 million World Bank credit line issued to a private finance company. So before making a single brick, the investors in Project #1901 have secured tens of millions in profits, all risk free.

Project #1901 is just one of thousands of such projects triggered by UN treaty and paid for by overburdened taxpayers in developed countries, with the US paying the largest share, fully 22 per cent of the bill.

You can track activity for some UN environmental treaties via the UN Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) database at gefonline.org. Searching by keyword “brick”, you’ll see Project #1901 is one of three such projects in Bangladesh, India and China; projects totaling $52 million, paid for by income taxed, then transferred, from developed countries to developing countries, with the UN and the World Bank acting as facilitators.

Each UN meeting requires carbon mitigation and more cash goes to more UN projects. Every protester equals more carbon equals more mitigation equals more cash. Never mind selling T-shirts to conventioneers anymore. There’s definitely more money in selling UNCERs.

Meet the UN

A generous people, every year US citizens personally donate $70 billion in charity to developing countries, plus another $23 billion via our government’s humanitarian arm, USAID.

Beyond this, we support various UN agency budgets. And we support the World Bank which, since 2008, has transferred more than $100 billion from 40 “rich” countries for financing and grants to 144 developing countries. At the World Bank, Communist China has just leapfrogged past Germany, France and the UK to become the third largest shareholder, just behind the US and Japan. And India’s not far behind.