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Slam carbon scams

By Michael Kile - posted Thursday, 2 August 2012


Other intriguing methodologies under DOIC evaluation include methane reduction from piggeries by using “engineered bio-digesters” and feeding supplements to dairy cows.

But how many carbon foot soldiers will be required to ensure compliance with the approval, accounting, auditing and management regulations now legislated to govern such projects?

All grandiose schemes come to bad end. Administrative complexity, flawed assumptions, arbitrary rules, perverse outcomes and rising costs eventually make them dysfunctional.  Caveat emptor.

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Who protects you from “carbon” double-speak?

If water, which is liquid H2O, is never called “hydrogen” or “oxygen”, why has carbon dioxide (CO2) – an atmospheric trace gas vital to all life - been branded as nasty “carbon” or “carbon pollution” by the government and most of the media?

Most government agencies, including ASIC and the ACCC, have now adopted this misleading convention, generally without clarification or qualification.

Double-speak, n. 1. Language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. It may take the form of euphemisms; eg:”carbon reforms”, “compensation”; “transitional assistance”, “progressive politics”, “positive list”, etc., making the truth less unpleasant. It also may mislead with intentional ambiguity or by meaning reversal; eg: describing carbon dioxide - an invisible gas vital to all life - as black “carbon pollution”, or implying it by using inappropriate images; also describing more expensive forms of “renewable” power as “clean energy”; service providers as “big polluters,” etc. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the truth.

Are emissions units a de facto currency?

By monetising an invisible trace gas, carbon dioxide, a pseudo-currency – the Carbon Con Credit (CCC) – has been created, literally out of thin air. Permission-to-pollute an anthropogenic tonne of the stuff (or its GHG equivalent) is now deemed by government fiat to be legal tender “worth” $23 a tonne, with a guaranteed floor price of $15 a tonne.

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Not so long ago, currencies were backed by gold bars. They had a weight and purity stamp on them from an authorised refinery and were stored in a secure vault. Today the public is being forced by legislation to accept there is real value in a virtual government-certified piece of paper backed by trace gases “stored” in – or in some cases, not emitted into - the Earth’s atmosphere; or by pig manure, burnt savannah and so on.

Ingenious academicians on Jonathan Swift’s island of Balnibarbi obsessed over extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, reducing human excrement to its original food and inventing a device for ploughing with hogs. Today the Department of Climate Change is approving similar curious schemes, with one big difference. In Warmerland, they also generate carbon-cash - if they are on the Minister’s Positive List.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who regulates the (“carbon”) regulators?

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Disclosure Statement: Michael Kile does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. He has no relevant affiliations, except as author of the Devil's Dictionary of Climate Change. He does not trade, or intend to trade, carbon units, Australian carbon credit units or eligible international emissions units.



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About the Author

Michael Kile is author of No Room at Nature's Mighty Feast: Reflections on the Growth of Humankind. He has an MSc degree from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London and a Diploma from the College. He also has a BSc (Hons) degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Tasmania and a BA from the University of Western Australia. He is co-author of a recent paper on ancient Mesoamerica, Re-interpreting Codex Cihuacoatl: New Evidence for Climate Change Mitigation by Human Sacrifice, and author of The Aztec solution to climate change.

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