A major feature of the Kyoto protocol is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), whereby developed countries can pay for "green" projects in the developing world to offset their own failure to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This mechanism is administered by the United Nations (big red alert here) which has picked a number of companies to validate and verify that the projects are indeed doing anything to reduce emissions. As anyone could predict, abuse and incompetence has already surfaced.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.
One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
The problems focus on the specialist companies that validate and verify the projects in the developing world which produce the certified emission reductions. Three of those companies have failed spot checks, which revealed a catalogue of weakness.
Separately, one of the CDM's experts calculates that as many as one third of the projects registered in India are commercial ventures which do not produce any additional cut in greenhouse gases and were wrongly approved.
There are only 17 of these validating and verifying companies. Most of them have a clean track record and will have approved reliable emissions reductions, but three of them have been performing so poorly that the CDM's executive board ordered spot checks - and all three companies failed on multiple grounds. The findings on one company, which is believed to have validated dozens of projects and verified millions of tonnes of carbon reductions, were so bad that the board considered suspending its right to work.
But of course it didn't suspend them.
According to the Guardian article, sources say some of these companies appear entirely clueless in every respect, which begs the question why they were approved in the first place.
One source who has been working closely with the CDM board had seen some companies filing reports with "all kinds of basic errors which make you wonder if they have any idea what they're doing". They included an entire report in a foreign language when basic rules require it to be in English; submitting a report containing remarks such as "we must check this before we submit the report".
Business as usual. If anyone has any feeling of deja vu, thinking back to UNSCAM aka oil-for-food, sex-for-food or the recently revealed UN guns-for-gold scandal, no, it's not just you.
When President Bush just announced his own climate plans, it was met with the expected jeers from the environmentalist groups, and a quite chilly response for Europe. That is unsurprising, and not only for the obvious reasons.
The climate carbon trading racket has environmentalists who want to save the world and make a buck on the side, as well as EU politicians who wants to pretend to solve the climate problem while not hurting their own economies and thus lose elections, all on board in one nice, cozy club. The Kyoto protocol already let Russia, Germany and Britain off the hook by setting the target year to 1990, after which these countries have lost a lot of heavy industry, and were expected to have few problems making the targets. The US went through this process earlier, and the carbon offset racketeers have consistently been drooling for money from American businesses, in fact pretty much setting up the Kyoto protocol as a mechanism for money transfer across the Atlantic. Also, of course, Kyoto is a wet dream for bureaucracies in international organisations and national governments alike. It provides ample opportunity for tax rises, administrative cuts from the carbon trade, and particularly enlarging their own staff and turf at the citizens' expense.
The whole climate carbon trade scheme is remarkably similar to the medieval Roman Catholic practice of indulgence trade, famously objected to by Martin Luther, who ridiculed the idea that "the soul flies out of Purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles."
It is a peculiar idea of modern environmentalists that carbon flies out of the atmosphere as soon as the money thrown into the carbon trade coffers rattles.
PS: But in Europe, the UN-worship continues undeterred.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "non-negotiable" that the United Nations should take the lead in global efforts to combat climate change, two days after U.S. President George W. Bush laid out his own strategy.
It's a good strategy, as long as your objective is that nothing happens except money changes hands and UN institutions grow.
Update: CheatNeutral, a spoof site where you can pay for cheating on your spouse, illustrates the idea perfectly. There are success stories:
James and Jo have been together since they met at school. They cheat on each other regularly – James with an ex-girlfriend he can’t let go of, and Jo with a man who delivers stationary to her office who’s name she doesn’t know. To offset their cheating they fund Chris and Mim through Cheatneutral. In return for the payments from Cheatneutral Chris and Mim promise to remain loyal and faithful to each other so that James and Jo can carry on cheating.
Next: MurderNeutral!
2:11:12 PM 
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